Blessing of the Phoenix
by Lucinda M. H. Cheshir
Summary: Holly's third adventure: Alexandra Godwin has finally made an appearance in her teenage daughter's life, but that presence isn't necessarily welcome. As for Azazel, he's busily plotting his precious war, waiting for exactly the right time to put his master plan into action... Disclaimer: I don't own CotL. Rated T for mild language and violence. Read and review! Diolch!
1. Prologue: The Imprisoned

Prologue: The Imprisoned

"Give it up, Marid." Azazel spat contemptuously at his captive, kicking her roughly in the side with the tip of his steel-reinforced shoe.

"No one can help you now. You may as well join me."

The young djinn girl didn't make a sound, other than the soft clattering of the jade chains she had been shackled in as she moved her arms into a slightly more defensive position.

"What's wrong, Marid?" Azazel asked scornfully, kicking the girl again, this time on the side of her left arm. "Cat got your tongue?"

Bleakly, the girl shook her head, her long, dirty, dark hair forming a thick curtain that framed her pale face.

"Then speak." Azazel ordered, a little of the snobbery edging away from his tone, and slowly being replaced with impatience.

Defiantly, the girl shook her head, keeping up her stubborn silence. This time, Azazel lost his temper altogether, and with a great roar, he grabbed hold of her by the hair and pulled her painfully to her feet.

"Speak, damn you!" He shouted, his enraged voice echoing through the derelict dungeon, as he shook the prisoner by her hair, making tears form in her eyes and yet not a sound escaped her lips.

Azazel kept up his belligerent shouting, hair-pulling, and kicking until he finally gave up. "If you want to die down here, in the cold and damp, be my guest," he said finally, throwing his captive back onto the floor in disgust.

She lay there for a moment, shivering in the thin white gown that looked more grey rags than white gown, and made no attempt to hide the tears of pain that were leaving streaks on her grimy cheeks.

Azazel turned to go, reflecting on how weak, in some aspects, the idiot girl was, and yet how strong in others.

"They will find me." Azazel froze. The prisoner had just spoken, for the first time since that day, that seemed so long ago, that his father had presented her to him. As a trophy, of sorts.

"What did you say?" Azazel asked, hardly daring to believe that she really had spoken.

The girl had straightened up now, standing on extremely scabby bare feet and wobbling legs. "They will find me," she repeated, looking almost regal.

Azazel laughed cruelly. "Is that all? Well, now that you've informed me, I can tell you that there's as much chance of anyone finding you here as a snowball has in Hell. I ought to know- I've visited there."

"Then you don't know my family very well." said the prisoner, jutting her chin out insolently.

Azazel laughed again. "Oh, don't I? I knew who you were even before you did. I flatter myself to think that I know more about you and your so-called family than even they do."

The girl's hands had balled into fists, and she was straining against her bonds, looking almost as though she would quite like to strangle him.

"Ooh, hot headed, are we?" Azazel taunted the helpless girl.

"I'm a djinn, you backward blond blockhead!" she hissed angrily, sounding almost like a cat.

"Yes, yes you are. Attacking me with alliterations is something that I would have thought beneath you,_ Marid_." Azazel sneered, making the girl's white face colour with rage.

"And I would have thought that using a demon to kidnap me was beneath you! I thought that you had some brilliant plan to kill all of us, but no, you just let others do your dirty work!"

Azazel's green eyes flashed with anger, and he advanced upon his prisoner slowly. "What did you say?" he asked dangerously. Not sensing the imminent peril she was in, the girl plowed right on.

"I said you let others do your dirty work, you filthy slime!" she shouted. Azazel stopped directly in front of her, paused for a full minute to let the tension build, and then, quicker than greased lightning, he slapped her across the face, leaving a bright red mark that soon turned into an aubergine bruise.

"Don't ever say that about me again, you stupid little shrew." Azazel warned her quietly. "Or I shall give you something much more painful than a strike and a bruise next time, I promise you that."

The girl didn't speak immediately, instead gently feeling the hand-shaped bruise on her face, and wincing mightily. Finally, just as Azazel was turning to leave, she spoke up again.

"You're wrong about my family." she said finally, raising her gaze to see Azazel's retreating back. "They will find me."

Azazel turned around and shook his head. "You can't rely on family, girl. Eventually they'll all abandon you, just as mine did. Just as my mother was abandoned by her family."

"If your family all abandoned you, that's your fault." the girl retorted frostily.

Again, Azazel turned, but this time he lunged at her rather than advancing slowly. A moment later, the girl was struggling for breath as Azazel held her against the wall by the neck with one hand, and held a black-bladed knife in the other. Slowly, he pushed her up the wall until her feet dangled uselessly in air, and all she had to hold on to was Azazel's hand.

"I would not say such things if I were you!" he roared. The girl attempted to fight for a second or two longer, but soon became too exhausted to fight any longer, and she involuntarily began to sob, silently begging for mercy.

Azazel released his grip on the girl's neck, allowing her to drop the few inches to the floor, and consequently collapsed on the grimy stone floor, gasping for breath and trying to hold back tears, but failing.

"Stand up!" he snarled at her, sheathing the black bladed knife. Rather than obeying, the captive girl curled into a ball, folding her knees up and pressing her face into them.

Once more, Azazel grabbed her by the hair, and once more he dragged her to her feet. "You will do what I tell you to, Marid." he thundered. "Or face consequences."

Numbly, she nodded, moving her head as much as Azazel's grip on her head would allow.

"Good." he said. "Though I still think that you deserve some punishment."

Azazel let go of her hair and took hold of the girl's chin instead, squeezing a little too tight, especially where her face was bruised. Her eyes grew wide with fear as Azazel leaned in very, very close. Far too close to be at all comfortable. "I tell you what I'm going to do, Marid. I won't hurt you unless you force me to, so I'd advise you to play nice from now on, or give up entirely. If you want to eat anything more than hard bread and dirty water, then you'll join me. I'll allow you to mull it over for awhile. But first..."

While Azazel had been speaking, the girl had recoiled at the scent of his sour breath, but after he trailed off, he did something completely unexpected, more than a little disgusting, and certainly to be viewed as a punishment by the young djinn girl.

He kissed her gently, as though he loved her very much, even though he quite hated her. As the girl struggled wildly to break the contact, the kiss hardened into something more forceful, and far more unpleasant. Once again, tears began to pour down Holly's face, dripping steadily onto the floor below.

**Author's note: whaa? Weird start, yes? I think this one's going to be quite a bit darker than the first one and the (kinda anti-climactic) second one... enjoy!**


	2. Chapter 1: An Inexperienced Mother

Chapter One: An Inexperienced Mother

Holly awoke with her heart pounding and tears still pouring down her face, but she was safe and warm in her room in Number 7, Stanhope Terrace, Kensington, London. Looking up at the painted night sky on her ceiling, she tried to calm herself, if even a little bit. The dream had been vivid, but it had only been a dream, not a vision._ Praise Allah for that,_ thought Holly as, finally, she began to calm down a bit.

She'd been having several of these types of dreams lately, so vivid that it felt almost real. Remembering the last bit of the dream, and shuddering violently, Holly took the cuff of her red silk pyjama top and wiped her lips off until they were red and sore. Then she wiped the tears away from her eyes and got up. Glancing at the window at the dark morning sky, Holly guessed that it was around five in the morning. A quick look at her alarm clock confirmed this. Sighing as her heart rate continued to slow to its normal pace, Holly wandered into her bathroom and switched on the light, blinking and squinting until her eyes adjusted.

It was then, when she looked in the mirror, that she noticed that she was drenched in sweat. "It's those nightmares," she muttered peevishly, stepping back into her room for a moment to grab some of her winter clothes, including her treasured red pea coat. Then she took an hour-long hot shower.

By the time she was out and dressed, someone was knocking on her door. Quite loudly, it seemed, for six in the morning.

"Who is it?" Holly called, tying her hair up even as she spoke.

"It's me. Your mother," came the reply._ Her mother. Alexandra._

"Oh, um... come in, then." Holly said, now beginning to wrap one her black hijabs around her head. The door opened, and Alexandra swept in, looking tired.

"So what's the problem?" she asked, seating herself in one of the leather armchairs by the dying fire and stoking it up until it was blazing nicely.

"How do you know I've a problem?" Holly asked, finishing with her hijab and sitting in the other leather armchair that faced the first one.

"Oh, I can tell," Alexandra said mysteriously. "You've been crying, haven't you? You took a shower, just now, but your nose is still a smidgen red. Do you need a handkerchief?"

Holly shook her head firmly. "No, I don't need a handkerchief. I'm fine."

"Is it boy troubles?" Alexandra pressed on. Holly sighed, trying to be patient.

"No,"

"It is, isn't it? It's not that boy Cas, is it?"

"No," Holly repeated through gritted teeth.

"Because if it is-"

"I told you, it's not boy troubles!" Holly insisted. "What do you want, anyway?"

Alexandra frowned. "Well, I couldn't sleep. I was wondering if you'd like to go shopping with me today. I daresay you could do with some new clothes. Nimrod may be a dear, but he's hopeless at fashion. Have you_ seen_ what that man wears? Atrocious."

Holly frowned anew. "I like my clothes, and Nimrod's suits aren't that bad."

Alexandra waved her away as though swatting a somewhat irritating gnat. "Holly, do you have even _one_ girlfriend to hang about with? Even a mundane?"

Holly thought for a second. It was true that she spent most of her time in the company of her brother, her father, Cas, and Groanin, but she hadn't ever thought of that as being particularly negative. And she did hang about with John and Philippa, when given the chance. "I've got Philippa," she said finally, and Alexandra sighed.

"I thought so. Philippa lives in New York, dear. Not in London. Not near enough to make any real difference." Alexandra studied Holly's appearance, making Holly feel extremely self-conscious and small, as though she had been placed under a microscope.

"What is it?" she finally snapped.

"Not a lick of makeup..." Alexandra muttered to herself, and Holly scowled. She was liking her mother less and less as the conversation went on.

"It makes my face itch." Holly said coldly. "And it makes me feel like a clown."

Instead of criticizing Holly's pronouncement, Alexandra nodded. "I never bothered with makeup, myself. I can't blame you for disliking the horrible stuff." Holly couldn't resist glancing at Alexandra's hands, decorated as they were with complicated henna designs, and raising an eyebrow. "And what about your hair? I don't think I've seen it at all. You wear those silly scarves over your lovely hair all the time."

Holly felt slightly hypocritical, but crossed her arms. "It's called a hijab, and I like them. They're pretty."

Alexandra shrugged, looking away from her daughter and down to the crackling fire, absentmindedly picking up the fire tongs and stoking it up a little more. "That's right, you were raised Muslim. I nearly forgot."

Holly's temper flared. "That's right,_ you_ were the one who dropped me like I was a piece of garbage."

"I had no choice, Holly." Alexandra said quietly. "You don't understand-"

"What don't I understand?" Holly asked derisively, feeling quite out of control now. Usually by now, Mark, Cas, or Nimrod would have intervened, but now it was just her and Alexandra.

Alexandra looked once again at Holly, studying her anew. "I had my reasons for entrusting you to Adam Coomes rather than your father. Reasons that I cannot share with you now. I will, though. I promise. Just not now."

Holly uncrossed and then immediately recrossed her arms again. "Why?" she wanted to know, still inclined to be hostile.

"We don't yet know each other. Now, please come with me shopping. It'll be fun, I promise." Alexandra coaxed.

Holly sighed in defeat. She did enjoy going shopping (as all young djinn do,) and it was true that in the area of clothes, Holly had been forced to mostly fend for herself in London. "Oh, all right."

Alexandra seemed delighted. She put the fire tongs back on their hook on the hearth, and clapped her dark, heavily hennaed hands together. "Wonderful! When will you be ready? Does an hour sound like enough?"

Holly shrugged, which Alexandra seemed to interpret as a _yes_. Glowing, she rose from the chair and bustled towards the door. "Very well, then. Make sure that you're ready."

The door clicked shut behind her, and Holly sat back in her chair, soaking in the heat of the fire, and gazing up at the starry ceiling. _What was it about Alexandra that made Holly want to strangle her half the time?_ It could be that Alexandra had the gift of prophecy, like Holly, though, if Nimrod was to be believed, Alexandra's 'visions' were quite a bit different from Holly's.

It could also be that Alexandra was simply like that: she could be infuriating one minute, and positively sweet the next. Number 7 had been thrown into chaos since they'd arrived back from New York to find Alexandra waiting for them. _Although..._ The more Holly dwelled on it, the more she thought it might be worth it to get to know Alexandra. After all, Nimrod must have seen something in her in the first place, to marry her. Holly wondered if Alexandra had always been the way she was now, so volatile and quite frankly unpredictable. She still didn't know if she'd always been like that, and Holly's curiosity had become greater than her resentment.

Sighing, Holly tried not to think about how awkward this shopping trip with her mother was going to be, and eventually, her thoughts turned back to her disturbing dream.

Now that she thought about it, those dreams were turning out to be a bit of what Alexandra called 'boy troubles,' but not at all in the way that she'd seemed to think of. The first time that Holly had met Azazel, he'd kidnapped her and threatened her life in order to obtain Cas's cooperation. The next time, in Madrid, he'd all but killed her. If it hadn't been for Gabriel, Holly doubted that she- or for that matter, anyone who happened to be on the entire European continent- would be alive. That had been the last time she'd seen Azazel in person, but a few months ago, both the visions and the dreams started up.

The visions were starting to make sense, being mostly warnings about the imminent War that Azazel was plotting, but the dreams were erratic. Sometimes she was in the underground prison, sometimes she was locked in a tower, sometimes she was just sitting in a field... The setting varied, but the events were all essentially the same. Azazel would come, taunting her, and she'd ignore him at first, but then give in and respond in kind. After a while, Azazel would resort to violence, rendering Holly practically helpless, and finally, ending with that same, terrible, horrible, passionate kiss. Holly shivered. The dreams certainly weren't visions or prophesies, so thankfully, they'd never come true, but Holly still had the niggling feeling that they were trying to tell her something. Something rather important.

Holly shook her head in a vain attempt to send the dream from her mind, then decided to go down to the kitchen to find something for her breakfast.


	3. Chapter 2: Dreams and Reality

**Chapter Two: Dreams and Reality**

Cas awoke feeling hugely exacerbated. He'd just had an extremely vivid dream in which he had been fighting Azazel in hand-to-hand combat. It wasn't the fighting itself that had angered Cas: it was the insults that Azazel had been flinging his way. All were in very poor taste, and Cas had tried to ignore them, but near the end, Azazel had begun to pull ahead, beating Cas until Cas was a bit surprised that his brains hadn't spilled out of his skull yet.

Dazedly, his anger fading as the dream did the same, Cas reached up and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, recalling the lumps that had been there, seemingly mere seconds ago.

"What are all these dreams about?" Cas muttered, sitting up and reaching towards his bedside table and the electric lamp that rested upon it. He fumbled a little with the switch before the light finally clicked on. Cas almost shouted, because the first thing he noticed was a slumped figure seated in Cas's favourite chair beside the polished marble fireplace. As it was, he restrained himself only because he recognized the figure. "Castiel!" In a heartbeat, Cas was out of bed and walking quickly towards the angel.

Castiel was conscious, though his breathing was ragged, and his once blindingly white robe was stained scarlet from what appeared to be blood, and black from some sort of oily liquid.

"Malone," Castiel wheezed, looking up at Cas, showing a very bruised and bloodied face to the young djinn. "Help... us..." Outside, rain pattered against the window panes, and thunder rumbled in the distance. It was followed by a brief flash of lightning, showing for an even briefer moment his white feathered wings- only half of the white feathers were missing and the other half were stained black and scarlet, wet and not at all conducive for any kind of flight.

A creaking footstep out in the hall was what made Cas wake up for real. He gasped, eyes wide with terror, and looked over at the darkened shape of the chair. Empty.

Hesitantly, Cas switched the light on again and looked back at the chair. Still empty. Cas shivered and glanced out of the window. No rain, just soft, silent snow drifting down, illuminated by the yellow light from the table lamp.

"Why did he call me Malone?" Cas wondered aloud, tossing aside his sheets, blankets, and down comforter and for some inexplicable reason, tiptoeing over to the chair. He didn't know what he expected to find there, but he was a little surprised to see a small scrap of paper pinned to the upholstery, marked with his name.

Even more interested now, Cas plucked the note off of the back of the chair and unfolded it.

_The dreams are reality_

_The reality's a dream_

_The young ones should remember_

_Things aren't always as they seem._

They were the words of a poem, words that felt ancient and brand-new all at once, words that made no sense to Cas. To him, it sounded all too much like a particularly strange episode of Doctor Who. Not that he watched Doctor Who: that was really more Holly's domain. So were dreams, now that Cas came to think of it. Holly probably could interpret these dreams of his, and this weird poem too, for that matter.

Cas stared at the cryptic rhyme until he thought his eyes would fall out, trying to guess at what it meant, what he should do, whether Castiel was really in danger, or if that was something his exhausted mind had made up. Eventually, in frank frustration, he crumpled the note up in his hand, and decided to ask Holly after all.

Cas shivered, and walked back over to his bed, dropping down on his hands and knees beside it and feeling around underneath it for his slippers. They were in their usual spot, directly underneath where his pillows were, and Cas pulled them out and slipped them on, wiggling his toes so that they didn't feel quite as cold anymore. Then he retrieved his warmest, softest, fleeciest bathrobe, and, tying it securely around his waist and snatching his little red LED flashlight from the top of his dresser, exited his room, with every intention of going and talking to Holly.

There was only one problem with this plan of his: Cas had no idea where Holly's room was. The reason was fairly simple: it had been Mark's doing. There was absolutely no reason that Cas should be in Holly's room, at any hour, let alone in the middle of the night.

Realizing this, Cas turned back, in order to at least get a couple more hours' sleep before he had to get up again for breakfast, but something very strange had happened. A strange rush of oddly warm, dank air buffeted Cas, seeming to make his dark surroundings twist, change, and melt away, leaving him in an unfamiliar part of Nimrod's house. If it was still Nimrod's house.

Cas shone his flashlight around, the light playing merrily off of the gold leaf in the wallpaper of the hallway. At the far end of the hallway, a twisting spiral staircase led upwards. As though drawn by an invisible force, Cas walked towards the staircase, his slippers scratching dully against the carpeting until he reached the wooden stairs.

The first step creaked ominously, bending like rubber beneath his weight. He guessed that he'd somehow stumbled onto a part of the house that was older than any of the other hodgepodge of styles.

Even though Cas had lived at number 7 for over half a year, he hadn't satisfactorily explored every nook and cranny: and although it appeared from the outside of the house that there was an attic room in the octagonal tower in the west wing, Cas had never been able to find his way into it. Until now, at least. The staircase twisted and twisted upwards, never seeming to end, seeming to stretch on and on forever, until finally, he reached a heavy-looking door carved with all manner of intricate geometric designs. There was no obvious doorknob or latch. Tentatively, Cas pushed the door, and it gave easily.

The room beyond was dark, but not completely black, thanks to a small, round window set high in the opposite wall. Cas could tell from the dim moonlight filtering through the brittle glass that he was in the attic: the unfinished, unpainted walls, the rough-hewn wooden beams criss-crossing above, the octagonal shape, the high ceiling- the room was unmistakable, even though he'd never seen the inside of the room before.

Cas swept the beam of the flashlight about the room, taking in all of the dusty old furniture: a locked writing desk, an ancient wooden tool box, and even a barrel that had a few mosaic tiles and glass bottles on top. Behind a fairly large spiderweb, Cas's light glinted off of something that had been highly polished.

Curious now, Cas tiptoed across the creaking floorboards of the attic room toward it. He was a little disappointed to discover that the reflective surface was nothing more than a couple of mirrors, albeit very beautiful and fascinating mirrors leaning against the back wall.

The one on the right had a ruby encrusted carved golden frame and was made of glass that had a slight reddish tint to it, almost as if it was a trick mirror in a creepy haunted house at Halloween that made you look like you were bleeding horribly, but the red tint was uniform. For some reason, it made Cas shiver uncomfortably. It took him a moment or two before he realized that it was with fear.

The other mirror, however, was as black as jet, with no frame to speak of, reminding him of an ornate black mirror he'd once seen at the Art Institute of Chicago. This mirror, not unlike that other mirror, seemed to gleam with a quiet, passive sort of hostility. It was hard to detect, mostly because the unpleasantness was so soft, so very patient, that one wouldn't even know it existed until it was too late.

Cas shuddered and took a step backwards. He disliked the black mirror more than he could really say, and for what reasons he had no idea.

He continued to stare at the strange mirror, though. He stared at it until the rest of the attic- and the rest of the world disintegrated around him. There was only Cas and the mirror, and the short stretch of ancient wooden flooring between them. His heart pumping uncomfortably loudly, Cas gathered his courage and stepped forward, toward the mirror. He wanted to see what the back of the black looking-glass looked like, and he had no idea why. All Cas really knew was that he needed to know what it looked like.

"What'cha doin'?" Asked a voice that was certainly not Isabella from Phineas and Ferb. Cas snapped out of his trance and turned to see who had spoken.

He'd seen ghosts before: just last month, he'd fought off a ghost lion and won, twice. He'd spoken to the ghost of Alexander the Great and his two ghostly cronies, who just happened to be Holly's adoptive father, Adam Coomes, and an American archaeologist who Azazel had (in essence and intent) killed, named Henry Peters. They had all appeared to Cas, Azazel, and Nimrod shortly before Christmas.

However, it was still unnerving to have one sneak up on him around midnight in a dark attic, and Cas had a mini heart attack when he heard the voice.

The owner of the voice was a faintly glowing, slightly see-through, mildly creepy-looking boy, around the age of thirteen, with an odd blue sheen to his skin.

"You're a ghost." Cas said, when he found his voice. The ghost boy rolled his eyes.

"No really. Tell me something I don't know." Said the ghost, and he folded his arms. "Anyway, you didn't answer my question. And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one."

Cas was once again, speechless.

**EEEP! Sorry it took so long, guys! It's just that school's started up again, and I got distracted with other projects... and watching animes... have you seen ****_Inuyasha? _****The ending made me full-out BAWL! Heh- anyway, I'll try not to take so long with the next chapter(s) Any guesses as to who this ghost boy is? I think I made it fairly obvious, but that might just be me... hasta luego, amigos!**

**-Lucy**


	4. Chapter 3:New Glasses from an Old Friend

**Chapter Three: New Glasses from an Old Friend**

"Glasses? Really? We're getting glasses that I don't even need on our oh-so-fantastic mother-daughter shopping trip?" Holly was having quite a bit of fun complaining, though she'd never admit it to Alexandra.

They'd borrowed Mark's new car for the shopping trip, rather than taking the Rolls-Royce, and Alexandra seemed to almost enjoy driving the old, highly polished dark green Studebaker around the London streets, both the back seat and the trunk filled with boxes upon boxes of new clothes, for both Holly and Alexandra. Somewhere along the line, probably at the salon that Alexandra had insisted upon visiting, Holly's hijab had vanished, replaced by the one thing she'd actually found herself: a very vintage soldier's cap that was just a little too large for her. Holly's coarse black hair had been freshly washed, dried, and curled into ringlets that shone rather nicely in the winter sun. Her nails, much to her chagrin, had been manicured and given a coat of silky-looking black polish. Holly had immediately begun to pick at it the second it had dried.

"Oh, don't try to lie to me, young djinn," Alexandra reprimanded, deftly ignoring a red light and plowing through the busy intersection. "I've seen you squinting. I may not have been around for very long, but I pick up on things that Nimrod doesn't."

"I think I'd have noticed if I was squinting," Holly retorted, but Alexandra wasn't done yet.

"You know, you are just like Nimrod! When he was your age, he wasn't having anything to do with spectacles, and yet his eyes were probably so bad he couldn't see something five feet away!"

"Liar," Holly accused. Alexandra smiled.

"Okay, so it was a bit hyperbolized, I'll admit. But Nimrod's eyes are very bad, and his father's eyes are bad as well, so I just want to be sure that you either need or don't need glasses of your own. So deal with it. And anyway, the optometrist we'll be seeing is an old friend of mine. I've a lot of catching up to do while I'm still here."

Holly sank lower in her seat, crossing her arms sulkily even as Alexandra snagged a particularly good parking space right next to the optometrist's office.

"Doctor Rocco Moore," Holly read aloud, sounding as bored as she could manage, "Certified Optometrist."

"Yes indeed," Alexandra chirped, getting out of the car and gesturing for Holly to follow. "I believe that he has a daughter about your age, so you may have someone to chat with while we wait. Come along."

Holly wasn't much inclined to follow Alexandra, but her mother's tone had made it clear that she'd have to unless she wished to create a scene, so, very moodily, Holly got out of the car as well and followed Alexandra into the tiny office.

Behind the front desk, a fairly good-looking, somewhat older man teetered precariously on the edge of a stool. His skin was the shade of a cocoa bean, and his hair was a curly thicket of black: a mini-afro, Holly decided. His lab coat had the name "Dr. Rocco Moore" embroidered just above the breast pocket, and he had a pair of horn-rimmed glasses resting dangerously close to the tip of his nose. He seemed engrossed in reading a novel, the title of which Holly had to tilt her head (and yes, squint, though she was so used to it that she barely noticed) to read.

"Rocky!" Alexandra cooed, striding over to the desk and attracting Dr. Moore's attention away from his book.

Holly almost laughed aloud when Dr. Moore nearly fell off of his stool. "Alexandra!" he exclaimed, a little too loudly, even though the waiting room was completely deserted. Holly was interested to note that he, like so many other men (including, to Holly's disgust, Mark,) was flushing a subtle shade of red and fidgeting nervously. Alexandra had that kind of effect on the male population of the earth, though Holly still had yet to witness Alexandra speak to an angel, like Gabriel. Holly was also interested to note that Dr. Moore had a pleasant voice, with a heavy Australian accent. He seemed like a nice enough fellow.

"How nice to see you again, after all these years! Last time we spoke, India and I had moved to Brisbane!" Dr. Moore said, still fidgeting.

Alexandra laughed merrily. "Yes, that was so long ago, wasn't it Rocky? And India, poor dear. I miss her more and more every day."

Dr. Moore looked at his feet, making Holly wonder if Alexandra had gone too far, and also wondering who on earth India was. "My wife knew the risks of what she had planned," Dr. Moore said quietly. "She knew the possible cost."

Alexandra pulled out a gold-sheened lacy handkerchief from her equally gold lamé purse and dabbed at her eyes melodramatically. "Oh goodness me, I almost forgot why we came here in the first place! Rocky, this is my daughter Holly. Holly, this is my good friend Rocky Moore. His wife was a very good friend of mine once." Alexandra lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "And yes, Rocky is a mundane. India was a djinn, though."

"Who's there, dad?" Called a voice from somewhere beyond a doorway that Holly hadn't noticed before. A moment later, a girl of about Holly's age stepped into view, wearing a mildly curious expression on her thin face.

In fact, everything about this girl was thin and narrow: from her feet, which were wearing a pair of American Indian leather moccasins, to her springy brown ponytail and wild black-streaked bangs. On top of all this, the dark-skinned girl (who could only be Dr. Moore's djinn daughter,) was close to six and a half feet tall. She looked, to Holly, rather as though someone had taken one of the most infamous medieval torture devices, the rack, placed a fairly ordinary, average Aussie girl on it, and stretched her out about a foot.

"Hi," Holly gave a little half-wave to greet the girl.

"Zoe, this is Alexandra Godwin and her daughter Holly. Alexandra, Holly, this is my daughter Zoe. Now, Alexandra, what did you come here for again?"

Zoe rolled her eyes. "Dad, come on. You're an optometrist, for crying out loud! One of them's here to be examined."

"That would be my daughter," Alexandra said smilingly, pushing Holly forward, toward the doorway that Zoe had come out of.

Dr. Moore nodded amiably and traded his novel for a clipboard and pen, which he gave to Alexandra.

"Here you are then, Alexandra. Holly, come along back here and we'll see just what the damage is."

The way he spoke reminded Holly of Dr. Calcifate, her old dentist from back when she lived in New York.

Back when she'd been plain old, unlucky Holly Coomes instead of powerful djinn prophet Holly Godwin who'd saved Europe from a fiery fate and freed the spirit of Alexander the Great from over two millennia of magical imprisonment. Holly resisted the urge to sigh dramatically at the strange twist her life had taken.

In the back room there was a chair, rather similar to a dentist's chair, or a barber's chair, only there were several long arms with various odd-looking apparatuses. There was also an assortment of bulky machinery surrounding a swiveling stool. Holly gave an inward groan. She suspected that this was going to be about as fun as a trip to the dentist.

She was wrong. Holly could allow her mind to wander during a dentist appointment. No one really expected her to answer questions, at least not during the actual examination and application of fluoride. The eye examination, however, consisted of answering about a hundred tedious questions, keeping her eyes open while one of the machines sent a puff of air (rather uncomfortably) into her eye, and trying to figure out which of two lenses, neither of which looked particularly clear, was the clearest.  
It didn't help that her claustrophobia was acting up, confined as she was in the tiny back room.  
Finally,_ finally_, it was over, and Holly really resisted sighing loudly in huge relief.

"How much do I owe you, Rocky?" Alexandra asked, smiling winningly. Dr. Moore gestured widely.

"You said rectangular frames, right?" He asked.

Alexandra nodded. "Yes. Gold wire-rimmed..."

They continued talking about what Holly's new glasses were to look like, but Holly had already lost all interest in the topic. She wandered over to the door and leaned against the short stretch wall to the left of it. She barely noticed Zoe when she came over and leaned against the wall right next to her. At least, not until Zoe spoke.

"They're having fun."

Holly glanced at the djinn girl, then back at Alexandra and Dr. Moore, still chatting animatedly, and nodded in agreement. "I think they're planning a lunch date or something. Geesh, Alexandra's a social butterfly for someone who spent 16 years tucked away in Afghanistan."

Zoe seemed mildly surprised. "Afghanistan? Well, she didn't stay there for the_ entire_ time. I remember her coming to Red Gully to help Dad and me move to Brisbane. I must have been like, three. That was right after mum went up in flames. Hey, I think they_ are_ planning a lunch date!"

Holly looked back at the pair of adults and saw that Zoe was right: Alexandra was saying something about a lovely little sandwich shop down the street and Dr. Moore was nodding enthusiastically. He was also fiddling nervously with his tie in the same manner that one would play a clarinet.

"Hm. You're right." said Holly, and she sighed again. "Alexandra always gets her way, doesn't she?"

"Sure seems that way." Zoe agreed. Holly smiled genuinely for the first time that morning.

**Yaay! Zoe's here! And I promise that I'll give ya more of her mum's backstory later... ah, the possible plot devices I can use... :D**


	5. Chapter 4: Jonathan Ghost

**Chapter Four: Jonathan Ghost**

"Who are you?" Cas asked finally. The ghost boy rolled his eyes again. He seemed to do a lot of that.

"Thought you already said I was a ghost." said the ghost sarcastically. "You seem to know more about it than I do."

"Oh, come on!" this ghost was beginning to get on Cas's nerves. "Stop being such a killjoy!"

The ghost boy grinned. "Fine. I've had my fun. I'm-" A burst of static interrupted him, and his ethereal form flickered and blurred alarmingly. A couple seconds later, he came back into focus, scowling angrily. "- Screw censorship! Listen, Cas, this isn't normal. I'm not supposed to even be able to come here. Something's wrong, and you have to help me find out what it is!"

Cas raised his eyebrows. "Yeah? It's called_ there's a huge freaking war about to start_, genius."

Ghost seemed completely taken aback. "A war? Are you serious?"

"Did I stutter?" Cas asked, shifting his attention back to the black mirror. "Anyway, what do you have to do with anything?"

Ghost shrugged. "No idea. The last thing I remember was being in this crazy-huge white marble hall, and then suddenly, I'm here and a ghost."

"Weird," Cas said absently, walking slowly around to the back of the strange black mirror. "What are these mirrors, anyway?"

Ghost snorted. "Really? You don't even know about the synopados?" Cas glared at him.

"I'm sorry that I was brought up in a non-djinn environment, Ghost. Perhaps you'd be so kind as to fill me in on what I've missed." He said icily.

"They're soul mirrors." Ghost shrugged. "The back shows you what your soul looks like."

Cas remained silent for a moment, staring in faint nausea at the back of the black soul mirror. "This one's mine, isn't it?" He asked.

"How would I know?" Ghost demanded. "Why? See something you don't like?"

"You could say that," Cas replied, not taking his eyes away from the synopados.

The back of the black soul mirror couldn't be more different than the front: it was so blindingly white that Cas had to look away at first: it was sort of like looking at the screen of an iPhone in the middle of the night. When his eyes had finally adjusted to the glow of the mirror, Cas began to examine it more thoroughly. At first, all seemed fine and dandy: just the uniform white glow, but as Cas kept staring, he became aware of a tiny hairline crack about halfway down the length of the mirror. He followed the path of the crack, observing how it widened and twisted and undulated across, blackening until it looked like it had been struck by lightning. Below the fissure, a rainbow of smoky pale pastel colours swirled and undulated about in a kaleidoscopic fashion, but above the rift, the blank white glow dominated.

This was not what disturbed Cas so much. No, what disturbed him were the wisps of darkness leaking out from the chink in the glass into both halves of the mirror. The threads of black that were slowly threatening to overthrow the smoky pastels and the inflexible, uniform white glow. The black looking glass was beginning to disintegrate.

"I should go back to bed," Cas said, nervously backing away from his synopados, and momentarily forgetting the reason he was out of bed in the first place.

"Hey!" Ghost protested. "I spent ages trying to find someone who could tell me what's going on! Now tell me, wet wipe!"

"Fine," Cas agreed, making for the doorway, "I'll tell you on the way back downstairs. Come on."

Ghost grinned again. "There we are, then! So tell me about the war you mentioned? Why's it happening? Why's it have anything to do with us ghosts?"

"Before I tell you anything," Cas was now back at the top of the spiralling stairwell, "Why don't you tell me what I can call you?"

"I already tried to tell you my name," Ghost complained. "Didn't you see what happened? I'm not allowed to!"

"Yeah, I know that," Cas shot back. "I just meant as in a name that isn't yours that you'd still answer to."

Ghost thought for a moment. "Jonathan," he said finally. "From now on, I'm Jonathan Ghost. Y'know, I went by Jonathan for awhile when I was still alive... that was before-" Again, Jonathan was interrupted by a burst of static, but he came back soon enough, swearing loudly. "Damn censorship! Who's doing that, anyway?"

Cas shrugged, skipping a step for no particular reason. "Dunno. Anyway, as far as I can tell, the aim of this war is to destroy Good itself, and Heaven along with it."

Jonathan was now floating lazily on the air, easily keeping pace with Cas as he continued down the staircase. "Well that's kind of stupid," he commented. "Who would want to do that? I mean, if you're a djinn and you destroy Heaven- even if you're an evil djinn- what's the point? To prove you're a big bully?"

"I don't know what Azazel's point is," Cas confessed, shaking his head in confusion, "but he's not exactly a djinn. Neither am I, which I mean, it makes sense, seeing as how we're apparently brothers. I for one still don't believe it."

"What do you mean, not exactly djinn? What are you, then?" Cas observed that Jonathan seemed oddly cool about the whole 'my- brother- is- the- evil- guy- who's- going- to- try- and- destroy- the- world' thing.

"Well, our mother was a djinn- still is, if Azazel hasn't hunted her down and killed her yet- but our father..." Cas shuddered at the thought of the enormous blood-red eyes and the horrible, sinister, oppressive, impermeable darkness that seemed to always accompany Beelzebub. "He's a demon."

Cas got the impression that if Jonathan had been drinking ghostly coffee, he'd have spit it out in a spray of glowing blue droplets.

"A demon?! Are you serious?"

"Are you deaf or something? Yes, I'm serious! Dimme Teer somehow got involved with a hugely powerful demon- twice, apparently!" Cas had inadvertently raised his voice. "I've researched the topic everywhere I could think of: I've combed Google, I've looked at every book in my library that had even a remotely helpful title- but as far as I've found, there is no such thing as a half djinn, half demon child. I guess Azazel and I are real oddities. Though I guess I'd be even stranger, considering how I'm fighting for Good n' all."

Jonathan had become very quiet during this explanation, floating along with the somber air of one preparing for a funeral.

"What is it?" Cas finally asked, trying to get his bearings in the hallway by swishing his flashlight around the gloomy hallway at the foot of the stairwell.

Jonathan shook his head. "Nothing. It's just that... well, you learn a lot of things when you die that you wouldn't have ever thought were important when you were alive."

"That's not vague at all. Hey, should I go right, left, or straight? I really have no idea where I am." Cas shone his flashlight in each direction as he said it, torn by indecision. He could be up wandering the halls all night if he couldn't work his way back to the part of the house he was familiar with.  
Jonathan shrugged unhelpfully. "How would I know? I spent the whole time I was here haunting the attic. I dunno where your room is."

"When in doubt, go left." said Cas, repeating something that Dr. Malone had told him long ago. Of course, that had been in reference to a corn maze in Indiana that the Malones had taken Cas to around Halloween time, when they'd been visiting some family friends. However, Cas figured that if Nimrod's house was anything, it was a maze. The layout made no sense (what Cas had seen of it, at least,) though the decor was creepy and/or odd enough to draw attention away from that fact. It seemed exactly the place where ghosts like Jonathan would hang out, but in the few months Cas had spent at number 7, Jonathan was the first ghost to appear in Nimrod's house.  
He had begun to ponder why this was, when Jonathan interrupted his thoughts. "You said that your mom's name was Dimme Teer, right?"

Cas blinked, glanced sideways at Jonathan, and nodded. "Well, yeah. According to them she's my mother. What's it to you?" Cas didn't elaborate on who he meant by them, and he didn't have to.

Jonathan knew that the djinn boy was referring to just about everyone.

"Is she related to Iblis Teer, d'you know?"

"Yeah. They're brother and sister. Why? Do you know something?"

Jonathan shrugged. "Well, if you are Dimme's kid, then that'd make you my-" another burst of static interrupted Jonathan, this one even more powerful than the two preceding ones. "-cking censorship!" Jonathan was swearing when the static died down and he was back to normal. (Well, as normal as a ghost can be.) "Why is it doing this? What's the pattern?"

"The pattern seems to be the static kicking in whenever you try to say anything about your life, like your name or your anecdote about the name 'Jonathan.' Someone doesn't want me to know who you are." Cas observed indifferently, coming to another choice of hallways, and picking left again.

Jonathan digested this bit of information for a moment. "You're right. I guess you're not as dumb as you look, wet wipe."

Cas shot his ghostly companion a scathing look.

"What?" Jonathan was instantly defensive. "It was a compliment, dummy!"

"Some compliment," Cas muttered irritably. "Hey, wait, I recognize this hallway!" Cas rounded another corner and found himself in the northern-most hallway of the house. He glanced behind him, certain that something was off, but found that the hall he'd just come from had vanished completely. All that was there was a blank stretch of gold-leafed wallpaper.

"That's weird," Jonathan commented. "I swear that there was a hallway there before."


	6. Chapter 5: Missing Cars and Clueless Cas

**Chapter Five: Missing Cars and Clueless Cas**

"Where's my car?" Mark stormed into the kitchen right as Cas lit the kindling in the grate.

"I don't know," Cas and Jonathan said in unison, over the foom! of the igniting newspaper and pine logs.

Mark scowled. "I'm going to ask Nimrod, then." he stomped loudly back out of the kitchen, and Cas heard him muttering furiously under his breath. Then, all at once, the muttering stopped, and Mark backed slowly through the swinging kitchen door. Then, just as slowly, he turned his head to stare at Jonathan and Cas, both warming themselves by the fire.

"Is that-?" He asked.

"Yep." Cas confirmed. "Mark, this is Jonathan. He is indeed a ghost."

"Ah. Nice to meet you, Jonathan. I'm Mark. I'm from Kabul, and my car is missing."

"Riiiiight. And I care why, exactly?" Jonathan regarded Mark with obvious distaste. Cas shot him a dirty look.

"What about Holly? She's usually up by now, isn't she?" Cas asked Mark, still eyeing Jonathan disapprovingly.

Mark considered this. "Well, I guess it's worth a try..." He wandered back out of the kitchen, presumably in order to see if Holly knew the fate of his car.

Cas stood and walked to the refrigerator. "You have issues with authority, don't you Jonathan?"

Jonathan blinked innocently. "What makes you say that?"

Cas raised an eyebrow as he took out a half-empty litre of milk. "Oh, nothing. So, what are we going to do about you? I guess we could ask Nimrod..."

Jonathan was shaking his head. "I knew Nimrod. Personally, I don't think he'll be much help, other than sternly wagging his finger at me and telling me to go back to wherever I came from."

"But where did you come from, though? That's the question. And why'd you come?" Cas pondered, pouring himself a glass of milk.

"And who sent me here?" Jonathan added. Cas ignored him, still pouring milk into his cup, lost in thought.

"And how is it that you know my name but not much else about me?" Cas murmured, looking up to the ceiling. "Aah!" The milk overflowed and some spilled, making a white spatter on the tiled kitchen floor.

Cas placed the too-full glass of milk on the kitchen table, screwed the cap back on the now almost empty litre of milk, and put it back in the refrigerator. Then he got a rag from a drawer and began to mop up the spilled milk.

"Nice going," said Jonathan, barely managing to hide a snigger as he watched Cas clean up the white puddle.

"Meh," Cas said, still deep in thought. "Another question would be who's censoring you and why."

Jonathan sobered a little, though he was still smirking at Cas's misfortune. "Yeah," he agreed. "That'd be another question I'd like answered."

Cas finished mopping up the floor, stood up and went to the sink to wring out the rag. His thoughts turned to the odd poem that Castiel had left for him. Though, if not Castiel, then who had left the sheet of paper?

Cas left the rag in the sink and sat down at the kitchen table. He reached into his pocket, where he'd put the scrap of paper, and took it out, smoothing it over the wooden table. He read the words aloud, feeling almost as though he was still dreaming.

_"The dreams are reality,_

_The reality's a dream,_

_The young ones should remember,_

_Things aren't always as they seem."_

"What's that?" Jonathan asked, hovering irritatingly over Cas's shoulder. "It sounds familiar."

Cas frowned. "Really? This turned up right after I had a dream with a half-dead angel in it. Do you know why it sounds familiar?"

Jonathan shook his ghostly head and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "I just feel like I've heard it somewhere before. It sounds almost like something old Rakshasas would say."

"Who's Rakshasas?" Cas asked, but even as he began to answer, Jonathan began to grow fuzzy around the edges.

"Great. Apparently I'm not allowed to tell you." Jonathan griped when he came back into focus. "I don't know if you've realized, but this is really really annoying!"

Cas gave a wry smile. "Oh, I've realized. But it doesn't matter anyway: I think I may know who you were talking about. You're talking about Mr. Rakshasas, the author of the SBR, aren't you?"

Jonathan looked a little surprised that Cas had figured this out, and nodded silently.

"Thought so," Cas said triumphantly, pleased that he'd figured something out. "Wait here, I'll go grab my library."

For anyone but Cas, (or perhaps for Nimrod, seeing as how he now had possession of Mr. Rakshasas' old lamp) this would have been a very strange thing to say indeed, but Cas actually did have his own bronze lamp, which contained a library even more vast than that of Mr. Rakshasas.

Cas's lamp was a curious one: the body was made of burnished bronze, but the ivory handle was carved in the shape of one of the seven archangels in mid-flight. The lamp, as well as the books within it, had been a gift from the angels.

Cas was heading towards the ancient wooden staircase when he ran into Nimrod, who was coming down. Apparently he was in a bit of a hurry. The knot in his bright red Campbell & Bummer tie was slightly crooked, as though he'd neglected to tie it properly, one of his shoelaces was undone, and his brown hair seemed a little windswept, as though Nimrod had forgone the usual chore of combing it.

"Good morning, Nimr-" Cas began, but Nimrod interrupted him.

"I can't talk right now, Cas, I have to leave. Where's Groanin? Oh, nevermind, I'll find him myself."

In addition to being extremely hurried in his manner, Nimrod seemed quite anxious. Well, more so than usual: after all, Nimrod was already under a great deal of stress due to the impending war that was looming over all of them like an ominous storm cloud.

Cas moved out of the way as Nimrod swept past him and vanished down the hallway in search of Groanin.

Wondering what was making Nimrod so anxious, Cas continued on to his room, snatching his lamp library off of its usual resting place on his bedside table, and grabbing two mismatched socks and a pair of sneakers out of his closet.

In the hall, he ran into Mark, who was holding a blue post-it note and seemed resigned. "Well, I found out where my car is," He sighed moodily. "Alexandra took Holly shopping today."

"Is that what the post-it says?" Cas asked, shutting his door and making for the stairwell, while Mark followed suit.

"No, actually. Nimrod shoved it at me after he told me where my car was. I have no idea what it says."

"It might be an explanation as to why he's in such a hurry this morning. I passed him on the stairs."

Mark nodded. "Yeah, okay." He still seemed a little dejected about his borrowed car.

"Let's go back to the kitchen," Suggested Cas, prompting another cheerless nod from Mark.

"Sure. Whaddya want for breakfast? I could go for an omelette, how about you?" Mark was now leading the way back into the kitchen, barely noticing Jonathan hovering in front of the hearth.

"Sounds good," Cas said, placing his lamp carefully on the table next to his milk. "Make sure you put some peppers in mine."

"Right-O," Mark said, seeming a little more cheerful now that he was in his element. "One toxic omelette coming right up for ya, kid."

It had taken a while for Cas to become used to Mark's way of talking- while he had known Mark just about as long as he'd known Holly, Cas had still not known him very well. As of last summer, however, Mark had become, essentially, the elder brother to Cas as well as Holly. And it was Mark's way to refer to anything too spicy for him- which meant just about everything Cas, Holly, and Nimrod ate- as 'toxic.'

"Y'know, Nimrod just came right through here," said Jonathan uncharacteristically quiet, staring at the fire. "He didn't seem to notice me at all."

"It might just have been that he was in a hurry. Mark, let me see that post-it, will you?"

Mark passed the blue post-it note to Cas, who unfolded it, carefully deciphered the contents, then cleared his throat to read it aloud.

"It says: 'Mark and Cas, I'm sorry I'm in such a hurry this morning, but I have to go and see my father about an urgent matter, possibly having to do with the war. If such a need arises, this is his address-' Oh, come on Nimrod, I can't even read that! It looks more like dancing weasels than anything!"

"Lemme see," said Jonathan, and Cas held up the post-it for the ghost to see. "You're right, it does look like dancing weasels. Are you sure that's writing?"

"Well, he was in kind of a hurry," Cas admitted. "And it was kind of a lot to write."

Mark shrugged. "Well, wherever it is, we can't follow him even if we wanted to. Remember, my car was deceitfully taken from the garage without my knowledge."

"Yeah," Jonathan agreed. "I wonder what the 'urgent matter' was anyway."


	7. Chapter 6: Last Chance

**Chapter Six: Last Chance**

"Last chance, cousin. Y'all either give me the required info or I send up a red flare for Azazel to find y'all."

Dimme Teer jutted out her chin defiantly, holding back pearly tears, and her bony right hand squeezed Bart's rougher left apologetically. They were bound, hand and foot, to a pair of uncomfortable kitchen chairs.

"Very well, Jirjis," She said finally, her heart pounding in her ears, her hands clammy. "I'll tell you what you want to know."

"Now that's much better, Dimme." Jirjis drawled, smiling to display a row of disturbingly pointed teeth. "Now tell me about the Doors. The ones your dear lil' son intends to open."

"Haven't you realized by now, Jirjis?" Dimme taunted slyly. "He's already opened one of the Doors. Haven't you noticed all of these ghosts floating around?"

Jirjis did not respond immediately. "You could say that," He finally said, so quietly that Dimme and Bart almost didn't hear him at all. "Kate keeps coming nights to stare at me."

Dimme smirked. "That's what you get for murdering your wife, cos."

Jirjis ignored this. "So Azazel has opened which of the Doors?" He mused. "Not Heaven, definitely. And definitely not Hell, either. If he'd done that we'd all be dead by now."

"_You'd_ be dead, Jirjis," Dimme remarked frostily. "_I_ know a thing or two about avoiding demons. Anyway, isn't obvious? Azazel's opened the door to Purgatory, unless I'm very much mistaken."

"Hm," Jirjis absorbed this information carefully. "And he plans to open the Door to Hell next, I s'pose" He seemed completely oblivious to the two burly men hauling large sandbags full of reddish powder into the seedy kitchen and stacking them around the perimeter. Bart, however, did take notice, and his mind raced to try to find a way out.

Dimme shrugged. "How would I know? I have about as good an idea as to what's going through that boy's head as you do, cos. However, that would seem to be the logical choice. I'm inclined to think that opening the Door to Purgatory was his way of proving that he could do it."

"And he can," Jirjis sighed. "Well then, Dimme. You've been helpful, I s'pose. Boys! We're leaving now."

The two men brought in four more bags of red powder, and proceeded to lay them in a square formation around the two bound djinn.

Jirjis, as calm as you please, took out a gold plated lighter from his pocket, along with a cigarette. "Y'know something, cousin?" he began, sticking the cigarette into his mouth and lighting it easily. "You recall when I took my axe and chopped my beloved wife, Kate, into pieces of course."

Bart rolled his eyes. "Everyone remembers that, idiot. 1973, as I recall. You were mad at her for putting too much salt in a casserole, weren't you?"

Jirjis grinned horribly, exhaling a large cloud of bluish smoke. "Exactly right, Mister Aalesworth. I was mighty angry at her. Still am, a' course, since she's turned up again to haunt me. Nothing on y'all, though. I'm gonna enjoy this."

He lit the lighter once more, and held it to the sandbag closest to the door until it began to burn with a quiet red-and-white flame. "This here's thermite, cousin. It'll burn and burn till there's nothin' left to feed the fire. No amount a' water'll put it out. See y'all in Hell, and tell Beelzebub howdy from me!"

With that, Jirjis swaggered out of the slowly combusting shanty, leaving Dimme and Bart to burn.

"What do we do?" Dimme whispered to Bart, over the crackling of the flames. "We can't put it out, we can't use djinn power to get ourselves out... what are we going to do, Bart?"

The tears she'd been resisting before welled up in her dark eyes and crept their way, like silent thieves, down her pale face.

Bart, by stark contrast, was grinning. He had been examining the window opposite him. His right hand, the hand that was not clutched in Dimme's vice-like grip, slipped into his pocket and resurfaced with a gleaming silver pocket knife. He made short work of cutting first himself, then Dimme free of the ropes binding them to the chairs. He took Dimme by the hand once again, nodded reassuringly, and crashed through the window and out into the blinding snow.

* * *

Holly shivered suddenly, not so much from the cold as from the singular sensation that she was being watched by someone. She glanced at the rearview mirror that Alexandra was busily pretending she didn't know how to use. There was Dr. Moore's little silver car, directly behind them, but somehow Holly didn't think her odd shiver was because of them. She looked beyond the little silver Prius and felt her blood run cold. There, caught up in the February London traffic, was a sinisterly shadowy black Ferrari. Holly knew that Ferrari: it had once followed her the first time she, Mark, and Cas had come to London, with John and Philippa.

She still didn't know for absolutely certain, but Holly was fairly sure that the sinister black Ferrari belonged to Azazel. And he was following her again.

"Are we almost there?" Holly asked her mother impatiently, tugging both of her thick leather gloves off in order to pick at her brand new manicure nervously.

Alexandra rolled her eyes. "Yes, dear. We're almost there. Goodness, but you're as impatient sometimes!" Alexandra spotted a parking space at the curb and without hesitation, pulled into it, rear-ending a car parked behind them. She glanced sidelong at Holly. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost. You haven't seen a ghost, have you?"

Slowly, hardly daring to move, Holly shook her head and swallowed.

"Let's just go in and eat," She said, voice trembling. "I'm starving, aren't you?"

They met up with Dr. Moore and his daughter at the corner, and then crossed the street to Alexandra's 'little sandwich shop,' which was miraculously still in business, and went inside. Immediately, Holly's claustrophobia kicked in, leaving her feeling dizzy and nauseous, as well as giving her an unpleasant pit in her stomach as she took in the steamed-up front window, the half-dozen tables crammed in the front room, and the busy kitchen in the back, thinly veiled by a partial wall.

Almost immediately, a young woman came over to them and smiled somewhat obnoxiously. "Hallo!" she chirped. "Table for four, then?"

"Yes, thank you." Alexandra said imperiously, and the young woman, whose name was Michelle, led the foursome to an empty table pushed up against the eastern wall. Holly glanced over at Zoe, and saw (without much surprise,) that her fellow djunior djinn was also looking rather queasy in response to the surroundings.

What seemed like seconds later to Holly, they were all sitting around the table, each with a steaming mug of hot chocolate (or, in Alexandra's case, hot coffee,) and the two young djinn were listening tacitly to the adults' gushing conversation.

Holly's eyes wandered around the sandwich shop, and she examined the few other customers, in a vague hope that she'd forget about her claustrophobia.

In the corner sat a solitary blond woman, probably in her early or mid twenties, reading a newspaper while she waited for her food. At the table next to her, two similar-looking dark haired men in suits sat, both eating, and discussing something in hushed voices. A group of five subdued but still rowdy students filled the shop with their incessant chatterings. Otherwise, the shop was completely deserted.

The little bell attached to the door rang, signalling that someone was coming in. Both Holly and Zoe twisted around in their seats to see who it was, but Dr. Moore and Alexandra paid absolutely no attention to the skeletally thin girl decked out in expensive furs walking through the door.

Holly stared moodily into her mug of hot chocolate. She hadn't really wanted to come with Alexandra on a shopping trip in the first place, and right now, in the cramped sandwich shop, was the low point of the entire day. Almost without realizing it, Holly began to speak, though in little more than a whisper at first.

_"In the moment before the dawn,_

_Three djinn will hear the Phoenix Song,"_

Alexandra, laughing nervously, hissed "Holly, do please be quiet."

Holly couldn't obey. The voice coming from her, while it was still her voice, also wasn't hers, not exactly. She had the oddest feeling that someone or something was speaking through her, as though she was merely a receptacle.

_"They'll follow the song to the ends of the Earth,_

_As the Enemy plots with malice and mirth,"_

Holly's voice was louder now, and she became aware of the fact that everyone was listening to her speak.

_"Time is running out for the souls of the dead,_

_Unless the mystic bird of orange and red,_

_Is sought out by the three purest of heart-"_

"Holly," Alexandra grabbed the sleeve of Holly's red peacoat and dragged her daughter closer in order to hiss in her ear. "Be quiet. _Now_."

Holly tried, she really did, but whatever force was making her speak took over her movements as well, and it shook Alexandra off casually, making Holly stand up, attracting even more unwanted attention.

_"To ask for its aid before the end starts._

_Where their elders have failed, these three will succeed:_

_A djinni, a human, and an angel in need."_

"Holly sit down_ right now_, or-" Alexandra began, but stopped abruptly as Holly's body went limp, and she tumbled painfully to the floor.


	8. Chapter 7: Fever

**Chapter Seven: Fever**

"Father, what is the meaning of this?" Nimrod brandished the much chipped and faded medallion in Dr. Kenneth Godwin's face. "You told me that it had been destroyed. That you yourself had taken a hammer to it!"

The elderly man raised a bushy white eyebrow, and readjusted his half-moon glasses. "I don't recall ever saying those exact words to you, my boy. Perhaps you misunderstood me."

Nimrod frowned. "No, I'm fairly certain that's exactly what you told me."

"No, Nimrod. I never said that I destroyed it. I do not know if you've ever tried to destroy such a powerfully magical item as the Phoenix Amulet, but I found it to be quite impossible."

"You didn't even attempt to use your power?!" Nimrod was shocked and somewhat dismayed.

Dr. Godwin actually chuckled at that. "It would have been quite hard to do that, Nimrod. I lost my powers sixteen years ago. I thought you knew that."

Nimrod sighed in defeat, and re-examined the cracked golden amulet, with its worn engraving of a bird. "But why did you choose to send it to me now, father? Why didn't you get rid of it sixteen years ago?"

"Young djinn," Dr. Godwin began sternly, a sure sign of an oncoming lecture, "May I remind you that I am 261 years old? I've been on this earth for a couple centuries, quite long enough to recognize patterns and chains of events. Use your head, boy! Why do you think I would send such a dangerous item to you?"

Nimrod scowled. He hated when his elderly (and somewhat senile) father lectured him. It always made Nimrod feel stupid, a feeling that he did not particularly enjoy. "So this does have something to do with the Demon war," Nimrod mused, attempting to make it sound as though he'd known this all along, "So are we supposed to summon the Phoenix with it?"

Dr. Godwin stared thoughtfully at his son for a moment, before turning away. "Not you," he said quietly. "Not you."

"Then who?" Nimrod asked, now even more puzzled than he'd been before. "The Phoenix Acolytes? You told me- sixteen years ago- that you'd disbanded. Dispersed. Scattered into the wind."

"No," said Dr. Godwin, now even quieter and more thoughtful than before. "Not scattered, exactly. Some of us died, and all of us others lost our powers. At least there were only five of us."

"Only five of you? But I thought-"

"Only five." Dr. Godwin repeated, interrupting Nimrod. "Now don't ask me who they were. All that I may tell you is that we were all djinn."

Nimrod frowned again, but didn't push. He was desperately curious, but Nimrod knew, when it came to his father, that asking questions after Dr. Godwin had clammed up was about as helpful as talking to a rock. Though the rock might have been a bit more helpful than Dr. Godwin.

"Very well, father. I suppose that I'll be leaving now. Groanin is probably getting impatient, in any case. Farewell." Nimrod turned, preparing to make his exit from Dr. Godwin's Camden residence, but Dr. Godwin stood up as well.

"Nimrod wait." He commanded. "I sent the Amulet to you because it told me that it was time. And... tell me, is it true what I have been hearing? About my grandchildren?"

"Which grandchildren?" Nimrod asked drily. "Do you mean Layla's twins or my daughter?"

"All three," replied Dr. Godwin. "I've heard so many things about those three. For example, that the twins relinquished their own powers in order to stop the volcanic eruptions that were causing such problems a couple of years ago. I've also heard rumours that your daughter- Holly, isn't that her name?- is a prophet."

"Well," Nimrod said, feeling oddly flustered by this show of interest, "Yes, Holly is a Prophet. She's had visions, and has had Gabriel the archangel watching over her."

Dr. Godwin nodded, and then gently pried the cracked Phoenix Amulet from Nimrod's grasp. "Very well, then Nimrod. I believe I should like to meet this youngest granddaughter of mine."

"You've already visited with Layla?" Nimrod asked, bemused. Dr. Godwin nodded.

"I have indeed. I went to New York the first week of December."

"Ah." said Nimrod. "It's funny, though. Layla didn't mention that at all when I went to visit."

"Nevermind, Nimrod," Dr. Godwin scolded. "That doesn't matter any more. What's important is that I speak with your daughter, and soon."

"Why?" Nimrod asked suspiciously, but Dr. Godwin ignored him, and exited his study, heading directly for the closet in the front hall.

"Oh, very well. Don't tell me." Nimrod said grudgingly. "Please yourself."

Dr. Godwin remained tacit as he pulled on his very thickest black winter coat. "Come along then, Nimrod." he said briskly, dragging open his heavy oak front door, the gold plated number 7 glinting in the pale sunlight.

Nimrod made no move to obey his father. He couldn't move. Slowly, Dr. Godwin turned about to see what exactly it was his son was staring at.

"Ah," he said, spotting the tall, dark figure. "Magnus. How nice to see you again. Come on in."

The tall, dark figure nodded, and stepped over the threshold, his fluid blue form rippling surreally.

"Heya, Nimrod." Alexandra's dead brother smiled weakly at his very, very paled, very, very shocked best friend.

* * *

"Her fever is still dangerously high," the young, fiercely red-headed, somewhat inexperienced Doctor Juliet Brown warned the irate woman helplessly. It came as no huge surprise when the tall black woman completely ignored Dr. Brown. She knew the type well: over- protective mothers, working themselves into a frenzy over their sick children. They were not fun for Dr. Brown to have to deal with. Not one bit.

Alexandra, for one, had good reason to ignore Dr. Brown. Djinn do not get high temperatures, was her thought, nor do they often become ill. This is due, in part, to a djinn's natural body temperature, 101.6 degrees fahrenheit, which is of course, a very high temperature for a human to have. Even dangerously high, as Dr. Brown had described. But not at all so for a djinn.

However, Dr. Brown knew more than she was letting on: naturally, she assumed that Alexandra knew who Dr. Brown's grandfather was. After all, Frank Vodyannoy was still very much alive, and likely about the same age as Alexandra herself. Dr. Brown knew of the djinn, knew that Holly was their Prophet, and knew exactly what she was talking about when she told Alexandra that Holly's fever was dangerously high.

And so, not knowing any of this, Alexandra burst into Holly's glaringly beige hospital room, fully expecting to see her daughter sitting up in bed, perhaps a little shaken, perhaps a bit disoriented, but otherwise quite healthy, thank you.

This is why it came as such a punch- in- the- stomach kind of surprise for Alexandra to see her daughter drenched in sweat, tossing and turning feverishly on her pillows, somewhere in between waking and a deep sleep.

Alexandra stopped short, mystified and feeling an unpleasant pit developing in her stomach. "H- how bad is it?" Her voice caught in her throat as she tried not to break down in an uncontrollable fit of crying.

"She has a 43.5 degree fever," Dr. Brown explained quietly, hoping that Alexandra was not one of those mothers who went ballistic at the vaguest mention of their child's possible death. "We're not sure if it will burn itself out, or if she... well, just won't be able to stick it out."

Alexandra sat down heavily in one of the uncomfortable beige chairs at Holly's bedside, her mind reeling. How was it possible for a djinn to have a fever? Alexandra had never heard of anything like this happening ever before. "I... I don't understand," she finally gabbled.

"How is this possible? I mean... I mean 43.5 degrees centigrade? That's- that's unheard of!"

Dr. Brown nodded kindly. "Yes, quite. But your daughter is quite tenacious, Mrs. Godwin. She's holding fast to life, even now." Dr. Brown's deep, unreadable green eyes rested for a moment on the not- quite conscious djinn girl, who was now muttering and even whimpering a little in her delirium.

Then she sighed and shook her head. "I'm going to do all I can to get her fever down. And then I need to speak to you and your husband, Nimrod. It's about the War."

Alexandra hardly heard the flame-haired Dr. Brown. She was still fighting back a strong urge to panic, and was scrabbling around in her head, trying to grasp some part of her that still held its sense.

"I'm going to call Nimrod," she said finally, her voice still cracking. "And- and Marion. And Jenny. M- maybe they'll know what's happening. What's-" she swallowed audibly. "What's wrong with Holly."

Dr. Brown nodded silently, and swept out of the room without another word. Alexandra's henna-stained hands shook as she took out her cell phone and began to dial Nimrod's number.

Indeed, she was so absorbed with the task and misfortunes at hand, that Alexandra never saw the rippling blue form of a slightly chubby young man floating surreptitiously into the horribly beige room. The young man's ghost examined Holly, who had now fallen silent, shook his head worryingly (sending his transparent blue curls into a frenzied jostling for positions,) and float back out the door while Alexandra waited impatiently for Nimrod to answer his phone.


	9. Chapter 8: Conversations Over Omelettes

**Chapter Eight: Conversation Over Omelettes**

"Well, whatever it is, we won't know until Nimrod comes back and tells us." Cas said finally, after a long and awkward silence between the three in the kitchen.

"I don't care about whatever Nimrod's up to," Jonathan announced, somewhat cynically. "I told you before, he's not going to be of much help. We need to try and figure out why I'm back here. In this world, I mean."

"Yes, yes, because you don't belong here. I know." Cas took a large sip of his milk and choked, coughing and spluttering as surreptitiously as he was able, but Jonathan still snorted and rolled his eyes at Cas.

"Well, have you ever heard of a djinn becoming a ghost?" the ghost demanded of them, drifting over to the fire and holding out his semi-transparent hands as though the fire could actually warm him.

"Yes," Cas and Mark replied instantly, in perfect unison. Jonathan turned and stared.

"Really?" He asked, the cynicism edging away from his voice, replaced by genuine curiosity. "Who?"

"Well, Alexander the Great, for one." Cas replied cheerfully, the previous milk mishap all but forgotten now. "And there have been other incidents a djinn attaching itself to a human and becoming a ghost."

Jonathan shook his head. "Well, it's not supposed to happen. That's my point. Something's very wrong with the afterlife."

"Three guesses who's behind it," Mark muttered darkly, expertly cracking an egg using only one hand.

"Yeah," Cas said, feeling vaguely irritated at his archenemy, "my megalomaniac brother. There's really not a lot of others who could be responsible. But what we kind of need to know is why."

"Well..." Jonathan began hesitantly, shuffling his feet uncertainly.

"Well, what?" Mark asked curiously, glancing over his shoulder at the ghost boy.

"Well..." Jonathan began again, but again paused. "I don't remember a lot about the afterlife, but I do remember the weird white marble hall, and I do remember..." Jonathan broke off yet again.

"What?!" Cas almost yelled in exasperation. "What do you remember?!"  
Jonathan shrugged. "I don't know if it was a dream or hallucination or what, but I saw this... weird girl. That was right before I found myself on Nimrod's doorstep."

"Yeah, and what'd she do-" Mark started with a mischievous grin, but before he could finish, Jonathan interrupted stonily.

"No. She spoke to me, wet wipe. Told me to find you, Cas. And that you'd help all of us."

"What do you mean, 'help all of us?' You mean there are other djinn ghosts like you?" Even though his full attention was now focused on Jonathan, Mark still managed to deftly scatter a generous helping of diced bell peppers over the half-cooked omelette.

Jonathan nodded. "Yeah, there were a bunch of-" Jonathan was again cut off by a burst of static. When he came back into focus, he was scowling sourly. "I remember seeing a lot of familiar faces in that marble hall. I think that a lot of us got dragged back to this world against our will."

"So where do we begin?" Mark asked, glancing at the very nearly finished omelette in the skillet, and then addressed Cas. "If you want any toast, you're going to have to make it now."

"No, I'm fine," Cas told Mark, and glanced once more at the blood- stained scrap of paper before taking another swig of his milk. "We might begin by trying to contact Castiel, or Gabriel."

"What do you mean?" asked Jonathan. "Who're they?"

"You mean the angels?" Mark asked, passing the completed omelette over to Cas, who nodded grimly in response.

"Although... I had a very unsettling dream about Castiel this morning. He looked... I think he was dying. And he said to 'help them.' Whoever they are." Cas felt a shiver run down his spine as he remembered how beat up and wretched the angel had looked. "When I woke up, he'd gone, but this weird note was pinned to my chair."

"Give it here." Mark ordered, and quickly scanned the short poem, distinctly frowning as he did so. "Yes, it is indeed weird, I agree," Mark said, passing the note back to Cas, "But what does it mean? Does it mean that any second now we're all going to wake up and this has all been a dream?" he snorted derisively. "If only."

"Well, the point is that we don't know. I was going to ask Holly about it, but somehow I got lost and ended up in the attic and I found Jonathan." Cas didn't mention anything about the _synopados_ he'd found as well, but he couldn't quite place exactly why. It seemed almost as though he had to keep them a secret, though for what reason, Cas was oblivious.

"You found me?" Jonathan demanded, in frank indignation. "I was the one who found you, wet wipe!"

"Same difference."Cas waved him away dismissively, and began to pick pensively at his rapidly cooling omelette.

"Now that I come to think of it, I've been having some odd dreams, too. At least, I think I have. I don't tend to remember my dreams after I've properly woken up." Mark looked thoughtfully up to the ceiling, as though it might help him to remember.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's real helpful, right there." He said as sarcastically as was possible.

"You're really very snarky, aren't you?" said Mark. "Were you always like that, or is it just something you get special from the afterlife?"

Jonathan snorted. "What do you think, idiot?"

"Well _I_ think that this isn't helping us in any way, shape, or form, so will the two of you please just _shut up_?" Cas interrupted testily before Mark could think of an adequate response. "Now, if you'll allow me to concentrate, I think I may've thought of something that just might help."

"Oh really? Well, in that case, you have my completely divided attention." Mark turned back to the skillet and poured some more egg into it, listening patiently.

"Remember when Vidor was taking us out to the desert a couple of months ago, and I just kind of vanished into thin air?"

"Yes. It's been kind of hard not to, what with that leading to my falling down a bottomless pit and ending up in Durango. You said that you had a visit with Gabriel, didn't you?" said Mark, without taking his attention off of his soon-to-be omelette.

"Yeah. I did. The thing is, though, I can't figure out how I managed it. Which is kind of too bad, really. Would have been a handy skill to have." Cas sighed and looked down at his omelette somewhat moodily. "Anyway, back to what I was saying before-" Cas looked up again, but only to completely forget his train of thought, for, perched on the table mere inches away, was a waxen-faced, unhealthily scrawny young man clad in ragged dark jeans and a torn black shirt.

"You will die," murmured the scrawny man, staring intently at Cas, but obviously speaking to himself, "And you will die for naught, filthy child of the Light." The dark-haired man's pale features twisted into a terribly unpleasant sneer, and Cas watched as he leaned farther forward and sniffed loudly. Having done this, the man took out a thin leather bound black pocket notebook from the back pocket of his black jeans, produced a yellow #2 pencil that was little more than a nib from behind one of his rather protruding ears, and jotted down a couple notes, leering repugnantly all the while. Cas watched in stunned and unnerved silence while the dark young man began to fade away, quite literally, before his eyes. It was almost as though his very obvious form was melting into the background, leaving no trace that he had ever been there in the first place.

"Cas? What is it?" Mark turned around to glance at the young djinn, one of his trademark 'what are you waiting for, weirdo?' looks on his face. He hadn't seemed to notice the young man who had, moments before, been fully formed. Nor, for that matter, had Jonathan. It appeared as though Cas had been the only one to see the young man, who he now suspected was far from what he had appeared as.

"I... the book... but-" Cas broke off, glancing nervously around the room. "You really didn't see him?"

"See who?" Jonathan demanded, somewhat rudely, but Cas shook his head, frowning.

"Never mind, I guess. Mark, you remember that book of djinn myths and legends that had the story about Alexander's Lion in it?"

Mark turned back to his omelette and nodded. "Yeah, sure I do. What about it?"

"Well, I remember reading something in it that sounds kind of similar. From the twelfth century, I think. Or it could be more recent than that-"

Cas was interrupted by the rather obnoxious chiming ring of the telephone. In one swift movement, Mark moved his omelette from the skillet to a plate, turned the stove off, and went into the hall to answer the phone that was still ringing impatiently.

"Godwin residence, this is Mark speaking," he said into the receiver, no trace of any effect the earlier ominous conversation may have had on him. The next moment, he had to hold the telephone at arm's length, such was the volume with which the caller replied.

Still in the kitchen, Cas and Jonathan could hear the voice very clearly, despite the fact that neither boy was actually listening properly.

"WHERE THE BLOODY HELL IS NIMROD?!" It was Alexandra, and she seemed, if anything, more upset than usual.


	10. Chapter 9: Purgatory Ajar

**Chapter Nine: Purgatory Ajar  
**Nimrod was seated once more in the slippery leather armchair in Dr. Godwin's study, trying to absorb all that his deceased friend had told him: all that was, even for a djinn as worldly as Nimrod, nearly impossible to believe.

"Let me see if I understand you correctly, Magnus." Nimrod began, not for the first time, and setting his empty teacup and saucer on the mahogany end table. "What you're saying is that Purgatory is a real, honest- to- goodness place? That It's not just something that was made up?"

Magnus sighed impatiently, his fluid blue form rippling as he did so. "Yes, Nimrod. I mean, why wouldn't it be? You never doubted the certainty of Heaven and Hell, and all djinn have visited Limbo, although most just call it the 'Spirit World,' even though the majority of spirits move on to either Purgatory and then Heaven, or straight on to Hell, or else- and this is really rare,- they choose to be reincarnated into something else."

"Indeed." Dr. Godwin, who had finished his own tea long before his son had, and despite the fact that the information Magnus had shared was as new to him as it was to Nimrod, nevertheless liked to pretend that he had known it all along. "And one would assume that the environment in Limbo would be too harsh for the spirits of dead djinn, yes?" Casually, he pulled out an ivory pipe and began packing it with tobacco.

Magnus shrugged. "I dunno. Being a ghost feels essentially the same as being a disembodied spirit, except for the fact that I seem to have more control over my surroundings. And of myself: for example, I can fade in and out of sight, if I so choose." He shook his head. "But all of that is unimportant, Dr. Godwin. What is important is that someone or something expelled all of the spirits previously in Purgatory- djinn and humans alike."

He drifted worriedly over to the window to look at the street down below, blanketed as it was in several layers of slush, mud, and very dirty snow. "The world doesn't seem to have changed much since I died," Magnus observed, his ghostly eyes following the progress of a small red car driving down the length of the street. "Cars are uglier, maybe." His voice was tinged with an odd sort of melancholy. Then, quite abruptly, he turned around and faced the two living djinn, his manner morphing into one of stricken urgency. "The binding is still in place, isn't it?"

"What binding?" Nimrod asked, in exactly the same moment that Dr. Godwin replied,

"Of course."

Nimrod eyed his father suspiciously, as, and not for the last time, he detected the presence of a previously well-kept secret. "What binding, father?" Nimrod repeated, his voice taking on a somewhat menacing edge.

Dr. Godwin hesitated, looking at Magnus.

"Oh, go on and tell him." Magnus prompted, shrugging carelessly. "It's been what- fifteen, sixteen years? Joshua, India and I are all long dead anyway."

Dr. Godwin sighed, and lit his pipe. "Oh, I suppose you're right at that, Magnus. Nimrod, I may as well tell you. You'll recall, just about sixteen years ago, the mysterious and somewhat suspicious circumstances of Magnus' death? In that enormous fire? You know, the one that the police and fire department couldn't make heads nor tails of."

Nimrod nodded slowly. "I seem to remember something of the sort, yes." He threw a sidelong glance at Magnus. "This doesn't have anything to do with the Phoenix Acolytes, does it?"

Magnus exchanged a look with Dr. Godwin that told Nimrod all that he needed to know, even though neither answered his question.

"In any case, Magnus was not the only one to die in an enormous fire on that same day. There were two others, each thousands of miles apart. Magnus, you were in Lima, weren't you?" Dr. Godwin turned to peer myopically at Magnus, who by now was staring morosely down at the street again.

"I was in Berlin, Joshua was in Quito, and India was in Red Gully." Magnus corrected absently.

"Yes, as I said. Berlin. The two others were one Joshua Maidan, a mundane, and India Bailey-Moore. You remember her: she was Layla and Alexandra's friend."

Nimrod nodded again. "And you're absolutely sure that this has nothing at all to do with the Phoenix Acolytes?" He tried, but this time Dr. Godwin merely ignored him.

"Their deaths were the price they paid for the great good they performed for all of djinnkind and mankind." he continued. Nimrod sighed impatiently.

"Would you please get to the point, father?" Nimrod demanded. Dr. Godwin frowned disapprovingly.

"Manners, Nimrod." he chided.

"I did say 'please,'" Nimrod muttered, folding his arms. "But as you were, I suppose. Do go on, the suspense is terrible."

"Very well. Magnus, India, and Joshua were killed because they bound a demon beneath the Earth. And as it happens, it was not just any demon. That demon was one of the Princes of Hell." Dr. Godwin paused, taking a long draw from the pipe, as if wondering whether or not he ought to continue.

"Which one?" Nimrod inquired curiously.

"Does it matter?" Magnus asked quietly. "The binding will crumble before too long, and then more will die in far worse ways than being burned from the inside out."

"It was Beelzebub, the demon of gluttony." Dr. Godwin supplied dully, nervously pushing his half-moon glasses further up the bridge of his nose and momentarily forgetting his pipe. "And Magnus is quite right: when the binding breaks, someone must be prepared to face the demon, else no one alive will be truly safe."

"No one ever is." Nimrod replied coolly, one eyebrow raised skeptically. "Light my lamp, but no one is ever truly safe until they die."

"And even then..." Magnus mumbled from his place by the window. He sighed. "The Phoenix warned us all that we'd die, you know. And yet we went ahead, and Beelzebub punished us by burning each of us from the inside out, not even ten minutes after he was bound." Magnus shuddered. "Even for a djinn, being burned alive is a terribly painful way to die. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Joshua."

"Ah, so this does have something to do with the Phoenix, after all!" Nimrod declared triumphantly. "You know, Magnus, if you knew that you were going to die, then why did you go through with it? Your death, among other things, caused Alexandra to go a bit mad with grief."

Magnus sighed again and finally came away from the window. "Nimrod, you know very well that anything I said in an attempt to justify my actions when I was still alive would be a load of bollocks. And as for my sister, well, I have to say I'm a bit flattered. She really felt that strongly about me?"

"Yes. And somehow it endowed her with the gift- or, more appropriately, curse,- of prophecy without destiny." Nimrod shook his head regretfully. "It's made her difficult to even have a civil conversation with her, at least for much of the time."

"Shame. Say, when was the last time you saw her? Is she still in Afghanistan?" Magnus seemed less eager to discuss this new topic than he was keen to leave the previous.

"Er, well, actually she's in London now." said Nimrod. "She came back in order to become properly acquainted with our daughter."

"You have a daughter? Well, congratulations, man! When did this happen?" Magnus' wistfully serious look was replaced with a huge, rather silly grin.

"Er... about fifteen or sixteen years ago, I believe, but-" Nimrod began, feeling incredibly awkward, but Magnus interrupted with loud, boisterous laughter.

"And to think, just twenty years ago, you kept on telling me that you would never, ever have children, even if your life depended on it!" Magnus guffawed some more. "I mean, I thought that you hated babies! How'd you manage it? I remember when my son was an infant, and let me tell you, that was what I call a doozy!"

"Actually, he still hates babies." Dr. Godwin interrupted swiftly, and with only a hint of smugness, before Magnus could go on to talk at length, somewhat too enthusiastically, about his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, none of whom either of the living djinn had met. "I believe there have been some extenuating circumstances surrounding young Holly's childhood, such as the fact that Alexandra didn't even tell him that they had a child at all until early last summer."

"No one asked you. And who told you all of that, anyway?" Nimrod scowled at his father

"Layla," Dr. Godwin replied, now openly smug, puffing away at his pipe.

"Well, whatever the case, Nimrod, that means that I've got a niece!" Magnus smiled warmly at his brother-in-law. "I'd shake your hand n' all that, but... well, I'm Casper now." he gave a short, curt laugh at his own joke.

"I think that we're getting rather off topic here." Nimrod, who by now had turned almost as red as his jacket and was far more flustered by the attention than he was willing to let on, attempted to bring the discussion back to the dire issue at hand. "We must discover how and why and by whom Purgatory was opened up. I propose that-" He was interrupted, rather rudely, by the brazen ringing of Dr. Godwin's ancient telephone in the front hall, three floors below, every bit as deafening and obnoxious as Nimrod had remembered it from his distant childhood.

Dr. Godwin rose slowly and very reluctantly from his armchair, his old joints creaking and complaining as they always did; the man was, after all, well over 200 years old.

The ringing stopped suddenly, and Dr. Godwin sank back down, vastly relieved. "I had quite forgotten that your butler was downstairs, Nimrod. Quite honestly, I can't think why I don't employ a butler of my own. I wonder if Mr. Pritchard is still looking for a job..."

"Pritchard died several decades ago, father." Nimrod replied tersely. "And no one will work for you because you're a forgetful, cantankerous old eccentric who's rather much of an Ebenezer Scrooge to his servants."

"I thought your mother taught you tact before she left." Was the only forthcoming reply. Nimrod's jaw tightened irritably.

"Nimrod, sir?" Groanin called up the stairs in evident resignation, "It's your Missus. She says she must speak to you immediately, sir. It's urgent."

"I'll be right down."

**Sorry I haven't updated in so long... I had to sift through loads of plotbunnies, and also... I didn't really want to throw in YET ANOTHER conversation, but this one's important: it reveals backstory! Anyway, I'll try to have the next chapter up sooner, so please review and don't go away!**


	11. Chapter 10: Demon Fire

**Chapter Ten: Demon Fire**

Holly was falling. She had been falling for what felt like an eternity, dank cool air rushing past her, chilling her bones and sending spasms of sheer terror through her. On all sides, the oppressive gloom loomed eerily, mocking her, jeering silently.

She couldn't believe it. She'd chosen wrong. She'd been so sure of herself, so sure that her choice was the only right option. Now, alone, tumbling head over heels in the dark and surely about to die, Holly began to cry, to blubber. All she'd wanted was to get her way- just once.

"I'm sorry, Father," she whimpered. "I didn't want this at all! I... I..."

_**WHAM!**_ With a deafening crash, the dark melted away, revealing tongues of what appeared to be black fire. Holly choked at the sudden unpleasant scent and overwhelming taste of fire and brimstone and... something else. Something very, very old, and very, very evil.

Holly's fall slowed until she was almost floating, drifting down into the abyss of black fire. She watched in horrified fascination as the black flames rose up, licking her ankles as she descended, almost like an overexcited puppy upon its master's return home. Curiously, the strange fire didn't hurt her at all, but it didn't warm her any, either. It was an empty fire, though the tortured shrieks of others trapped in the fire somewhere beyond her vision, told Holly that she was lucky.

She continued to drift downwards, slowly becoming engulfed in the roaring yet empty black fire.

Her bare feet touched the rocky pitted surface below, the source of the black fire, and at long last, she screamed, her voice rising in a tormented crescendo as her body slowly turned to ice.

"Welcome to Hell, Prophet."

* * *

"She's been like this for quite awhile." Dr. Brown explained to the newcomers, glancing momentarily at the feverish young djinn in question. "Honestly, I believe that Holly's current condition is... well, the phrase would be 'way out of our depth.' I'd recommend taking her to the djinn clinic."

"Yes, of course. I can't think why Alexandra didn't take her there in the first place." Nimrod frowned and followed Dr. Brown's gaze through the open doorway at his comatose daughter and distraught wife.

"Then I'll make arrangements immediately." Dr. Brown assured Nimrod, but then paused. "And Mr. Godwin, sir, I'll need to speak with you as soon as possible. It's about the war-"

"Yes, yes. Whatever you think is necessary." Nimrod waved the young doctor away dismissively, and followed Mark, Cas, Dr. Godwin, and Groanin into the dreadfully beige room to wait.

* * *

It was dark, almost black, but with the faintest hint of dim, silvery starlight filtering down through the near-freezing waters of the Thames. Her mouth and nose filled with polluted water, and she tried to swim up, towards the almost nonexistent light, towards air, but without success. Half-frozen mud swirled around her, pulling the drowning girl deeper into the river, and her clothes soaked in more dirty water and weighed her down even more. Her lungs burned, begging for her to take a breath, just one breath of painfully cold but life-giving air, but Holly couldn't. After one last, valiant effort to free herself from the concrete block she was chained to, Holly gave up. Her vision faded, her heart slowed, and her now lifeless body continued to sink deeper and deeper into the depths of the cold, unforgiving River Thames.

* * *

"Nimrod, I can't just leave her." Alexandra protested tearfully, shoving one of the more unfortunate of the ugly vases that decorated the hospital hallway, sending it crashing to the linoleum floor.

Nimrod glanced at the shattered vase apprehensively. "No one is asking you to leave her, Alexandra." He said, in what he hoped was a calming manner, "But you can't very well intend to go all the way to Scotland with her."

Alexandra stamped her foot on one of the pieces of broken vase. "Yes I can!" She exclaimed adamantly. "And what do you mean, Scotland?!"

Nimrod sighed. It was taking all of his own willpower not to break down, exactly as Alexandra was doing. "What I mean is," He explained, his patience waning, "that the only djinn clinic nearby enough and with any space left to take Holly is in Braemar. In Scotland. So it is there she will go."

"Then I'm going to Braemar, too. I don't care if the food is terrible and you can't understand a word that any of the locals say, I'm going!" Alexandra stamped her foot again and brushed a tear from her eye.

Nimrod sighed again. Clearly, Alexandra was determined to stay with Holly for at least as long as the effects of the mysterious fever were present, but he had to get her to leave, if only for an hour or so. "Very well, Alexandra. You're going to Braemar when Holly goes. I suppose that means that I ought to come as well."

Alexandra nodded with as much dignity as she could muster. "Good." she said sharply.

"I'm not finished yet. If we're going to Braemar, then we ought to go home and pack, oughtn't we?"

This earned Nimrod a reproachful glare from his wife. "Sometimes I really think that you don't love me, Nimrod." She said frostily.

Nimrod ignored her tone, and, seeing that he had at least won the post-argument argument, set about the task of locating Groanin.

* * *

Holly awoke to find that she was nose-to-nose with a very grumpy- looking black and gold striped hooded Egyptian cobra. She shrieked loudly and scrambled as far away as she could, considering that her movement was very much restricted by the length of rope binding her wrists behind her back. The snake hissed as snakes do, seeming more startled than hostile, and slithered away into a patch of tall grass. Holly watched it go, and then examined the rest of her surroundings more carefully. She was in an overgrown stone-walled courtyard that was illuminated by an otherworldly red glow.

"Hang on," she muttered to herself, "I know this." Holly rose to her feet with quite a bit of difficulty, and finally managed to make her way over to a large niche in the blackened stone wall. There, she was able to see, far far below her, (indeed, the height alone was enough to make Holly feel somewhat sick to her stomach,) was a gathering of about four other people. Oddly enough, she didn't have to squint to see the faces of the people standing far below her.

There was Nimrod, looking surprisingly similar to Gabriel in an impeccably white suit and a rather ridiculously bulky silver crown, and standing next to him was Alexandra, wearing an equally spotless white silk sari, an overwhelming amount of glittering silvery jewelry, and a silver, diamond-studded tiara that matched Nimrod's crown. A few feet away from them, Mark stood, looking (if it was possible,) even sillier than the latter two, for he was clad, once again, in the same manner as an Egyptian champion, wearing a white kilt, a white headdress, and a silver armband. His blue-tinted sword was drawn, and all three were looking up to where Holly was, pale concern in their eyes.

"It's chess," she said aloud, suddenly realizing why this all seemed so familiar to her. "I've had this dream before, and it's chess!"

"That's right," said a familiar voice behind her.

"Took you awhile, didn't it Hol?" added a second voice. Holly turned around, and her grin froze in place when she saw the owners of the two voices.

"Cas." She began, her eyes darting from one person to the other, and grappling for words. "Th... Wha...?"

"I know." Agreed Cas. "There are two of me."

The other Cas nodded. "Strange, isn't it?"

Holly remained speechless, her eyes as wide as saucers as she continued looking at one Cas and then the other.

The Cas to her right was dressed in a few layers of loose-fitting white robes with silver embroidery, his dark hair had been neatly and uncharacteristically combed out of his face, and on his head he wore a similarly coloured pointed hat.

The other Cas, the Cas to Holly's left, was clad similarly in a loose white robe, though his hat was more like Mark's headdress than the other Cas's mitre, and his dark hair looked just as messy as it usually was. Both Cases held silver staffs, though the Cas on the right had a shepherd's crook, while the Cas on the left leaned nonchalantly on a staff that was topped with an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life.

Finally, Holly found her voice. "You look like the pope." she said, pointing to the Cas on the right.

He glanced down at himself, and then at his shepherd's crook. "I suppose," he conceded. "But all of this... these... costumes are meant to represent the fact that we're the bishops in this chess game."

The Cas on the left nodded, beaming. "Yup. And you're a knight." He said matter-of-factly. Holly raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not dressed like a weirdo, though. Am I?" she glanced down at herself, and saw that she was dressed as she normally was, apart from the fact that all of her clothes seemed to follow the same colour scheme as the rest of her family, and that at her hip rested the silver hilt of a sword, not unlike that of Mark.

"Sorry to disappoint," smiled the Cas on the right.

"You should wake up soon, though." added the Cas on the left, his grin vanishing. "Everyone's worried sick."

"Yes." The Cas on the right agreed. "But you'll need help. I- we will send him along shortly. 'Til then-"

"Just try not to give up." Interrupted the Cas on the left. "And remember this: What never died..."

"...Is still alive." Finished the Cas on the right, sparing the other Cas a fairly irritated glance. "You may have to remind me of that later."

"Time's up." Holly felt the familiar sense of dread nestle once again in the pit of her stomach as Azazel stepped out of the shadows. "Now leave, you two."

* * *

"There's nothing I can do." Magnus said quietly. "I don't know how to banish demon fire from her soul. If you'll recall, I didn't survive." He sighed. "We don't even know why Beelzebub or some other demon chose to infect her with demon fire."

"Then I fail to see the point of you even coming here, if all you were going to contribute was 'there's nothing I can do.' Not very helpful." Mark, whose nerves had been on edge since Alexandra's phone call, was ready to lash out at just about anyone. It irritated Mark even more, if such a thing was possible, that Magnus seemed somehow familiar, but he couldn't quite place why or how.

"Maybe I wanted to see my only niece before she dies a horrible painful death!" Magnus snapped back.

"Would you both please shut up?" Cas's voice was barely more than a whisper. Until then, he had been even quieter than was normal for him, staring silently at his best friend and clutching at the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. "None of this is helping at all. So until someone has something valuable to contribute, can you not be at each other's throats?"

Reluctantly, Mark and Magnus quieted, though from time to time, Mark shot the ghost a resentful glance.

"I know what to do." Jonathan, who had been as equally silent as Cas, piped up. "But I have to do it, and it won't cure anything, just delay it a bit."

"What?" Mark asked tensely. "What is it?"

Jonathan paused. "Well," he began carefully. "It's a bit hard to explain."

* * *

"Calm down. It's not as though I'm going to kill you or anything." Azazel unsheathed one of his razor-sharp black bladed knives and stroked the edge with his index finger in a businesslike manner. "Only torture you a little. And it was more than generous of me to allow you to see your friends before we began. Now it'll be fresh in your memory just exactly who you'll be betraying."  
Holly pulled fruitlessly at one of the copper shackles that bound her to the chair, hoping that the help Cas had mentioned before was soon in coming.

"It's useless. You know that." Azazel's tone was condescending as he approached her, the knife glinting sinisterly in his left hand.

"Now, if you hold still, this might hurt a bit less."

"Liar." Holly spat. Azazel shrugged.

"Oh, you're right. Shame on me, and all that. But have you forgotten? I am evil. Evil people lie sometimes." He paused. "So do good people, I suppose. But evil has more fun with the lies."

"I'm not going to betray my friends and family." Holly changed the subject, wishing with every fibre of her being that her rescuer would show up _now_.

"Oh, but you will." Azazel grinned. Momentarily, Holly was distracted from her wishing by the uncanny resemblance the evil djinn held to Cas, a resemblance that sent a shiver down her spine, but this thought was soon banished from her mind by the sudden appearance of the dark, slight figure of a boy a couple years younger than Holly.

"Hey, moron!" the boy taunted Azazel. Azazel turned slowly around to face the newcomer. "Leave her alone." Quick as a flash, the mysterious boy sucker- punched Azazel with more force than seemed possible, sending him sprawling across the room. A second later, both the spread-eagled Azazel and the copper chains binding Holly burst into scraps of shadow.

"What the hell?!" shouted the boy, turning to Holly and helping her stand. "What the freaking hell is wrong with you?" He sighed and shook his head. "Nevermind, we don't have time for a soliloquy. Come on, we have to go find your _Neshamah_."

Holly stared at the boy, unsure whether to be offended by his verbal abuse, or pleased that he'd rescued her. Then, as he pulled open a trapdoor that had previously been hidden by tall grass, Holly realized that she'd seen him somewhere before.

"Hey!" she said, "I know you!"

The boy froze.

**Wow... this is a long one, isn't it? And YEAH! Some ACTION! Heh... well, anyway, tell me what you think, por favor! D'you like it? D'you hate it? :D**


	12. Chapter 11: Past is Past

**Chapter Eleven: Past is Past**

"What?" Slowly, the boy turned to face Holly again.

"You heard me, I know you! You're what's-his-face, the street magician who was uber famous a couple years ago!"

"I... how do you know that?" The boy seemed stunned. Holly snorted and rolled her eyes.

"Everyone knew about Jonathan Tarot! I watched your special- and was rewarded with the most terrifying experience of my pre-djinn existence." She scowled at him. "Though, come to think of it, Jonathan Tarot isn't your real name, is it? It's Buck or something, yeah?"

Numbly, Buck nodded. "How do you know that?" He repeated.

"My cousins John and Philippa told me about you. But now I've got some questions for you: where are we? And why're you here?"  
Buck's shock was replaced by bemusement. "Really? You mean you don't know? I'm here 'cause you told me to be here. We're in your head."

Holly sighed. "As usual, all of the crazy is just in my head. Y'know, if I ever wake up and find that this whole djinn prophet thing was only a dream, I'm definitely going to go insane."

"That's nice," Buck rolled his eyes, making it more than obvious that he didn't give two hoots. "Come on, then. We've gotta find your Neshamah." He threw open the trapdoor and made to step through.

"So what's going on?" Holly asked, following him, picking her way through the tall grass and being wary of any cobras that might be hiding there. "What's my Neshamah have to do with anything?"

Buck shrugged. "According to them on the outside, you've been infected with demon fire or something weird like that."

"Who do you mean, 'them on the outside?'" Holly asked quizzically. "Do you mean Cas?"

"Yeah," Buck nodded. "Hurry up. But there are a couple others, too. Mark's there, and your grandpa, and your dead uncle, too."

"Dead uncle?"

"Magnus, I think his name is. He was your mom's brother." Buck took Holly by the wrist and stepped through the trapdoor, and into a dusty hall, the walls of which were lined with equally dusty portraits of stern-looking old men and women.

Holly detached herself from Buck, then ran her finger along the edge of one of the frames and examined the grime that accumulated on the tip of it. "Looks like my head could do with a bit of housekeeping," she joked, trying to ignore the creepy feeling that the portraits gave her. "Wonder where we are, anyway."

Buck shrugged again. "This ain't my head. You tell me."

Holly shivered. "I dunno. Let's keep moving. These portraits are really beginning to creep me out."

"Agreed. Hey, there's a door over there." Buck pointed to the other end of the hall, where the faint outline of a door was barely visible.

The two walked, side by side, down the middle of the dusty marble floor, towards the faint outline of the door.

"It seems really far away, doesn't it?" Holly commented, glancing around at the passing and shivering.

"Can I ask you something?" Buck was so uncharacteristically serious, even Holly, who had only just met him, could tell something weighty was on his mind.

"Depends on what it is. But go ahead, shoot." Buck looked down at his feet as they continued down the length of the hall.

"Well... you recognized me right away, yeah?"

"Yes," Holly nodded slowly, wondering what could possibly be on Buck's mind. "Like I said, you were pretty uber famous. I mean, you look a lot different from then, what with the hair and the clothes, but you're still recognizable, even if you look a lot less stupid."

"I looked stupid?" Buck looked up, momentarily distracted, but then shook his head. "Yeah, you're right, I guess I did look pretty dumb, especially considering the fact that I was on TV n' stuff. Anyway, what my point is, when I was talking to your friend Cas before, he didn't recognize me. Neither did your brother. And I know for a fact that my face and my stupid fake name were all over the world. Iblis made sure of it."

Holly sighed. "And so now you're asking me how it's possible that my best friend and my brother don't know who you are?"

"That's about right, yeah." Buck nodded gloomily.

"Well, as for Mark, he made it a point to have nothing to do with you. As proof of his utter disinterest of street magic. Plus, most of the time, he was never home. He was at college, taking exams and stuff." Holly sighed. "He really wanted to get into law school. Started studying up when he was a junior. Anyway, Cas I can't vouch for, 'cause I didn't know him back then. Although, if his current behaviour is anything to go by..." Holly grinned, thinking of the way her best friend had, especially recently, been staying up all night reading his books. "Well, he probably had his nose stuck in some book."

They reached the door as Holly finished, and she squinted at it, running her hands along the edges, searching for a handle. "Great." she muttered. "Just great. No handle. How're we supposed to open it?" Holly gave the door a hearty shove, and when it didn't move, kicked it just for good measure.

"Now what are we gonna do? Knock?" Buck laughed nervously.

"May as well." Holly shrugged, taking the younger djinn at his word, and began to pound on the door. "Open up!" she yelled, her voice echoing and reverberating about the dusty hall of portraits.

"It's no use," Buck muttered, just before the door splintered and fell open, as if to spite him. Holly grinned.

"Might want to rethink that last statement, bud." she laughed, and kicked in the mass of splinters that had once been a door, before forcing her way through it and beckoning for Buck to follow. "Hurry up!" she hissed impatiently.

Reluctantly, Buck squeezed himself through the hole in the door, following Holly into a completely different room, a bright, cheerful one that bore absolutely no resemblance to the gloomy dust-coated hall.

"Where are we?" He asked, looking around the painted green walls with faint nausea. He took in the large and rather cluttered desk, the empty violin case resting in the middle of the dark green carpet, the open and vastly disorganized closet, and the unmade bed pushed against one wall. He looked over his shoulder, and noted that the splintered door had vanished.

"It's... my room." Holly replied dreamily, picking up the violin and its bow from where it rested on the chair in front of the desk. Dazedly, she plucked a few of the strings, and then tucked the instrument beneath her chin and started playing it. Of course, Holly was long out of practice, and the violin sounded more screechy than melodic, so much so that Buck felt obliged to pry the bow from her grasp.

"We should keep moving." he said, still cringing at the horrible sound that the fiddle had made.

Holly seemed to come to her senses, at least somewhat. "Yeah, we should. We don't have forever, do we?"

Buck nodded his agreement and followed Holly through the door at the far end of the room. Once again, as they passed through the door, their surroundings shifted drastically. This time, they stood on a small, crumbling stretch of sidewalk, directly in front of the blackened empty shell of ruins that had once been a house, illuminated by the pale light of a winter morning. Once more, Holly instantly recognized the place.

Tears pricked at her eyes as Holly struggled in a fruitless effort not to cry.

"Where's this?" Buck asked gazing blankly at the ruins before them. "It looks like it burned down recently. I can still smell the smoke." He glanced at Holly, and, seeing her darkly grieving expression, added, "Something wrong?"

Firmly, Holly shook her head, and turned away. "No. Just a bridge that was burned last summer."

"It's not a bridge, though..." Buck muttered, taking Holly's metaphor a bit too literally.

"Come on. We're close, I can feel it." Holly began walking down the crumbling sidewalk, until the pale winter morning was gone, replaced by a bright summer afternoon, and the sliver of New York was replaced by a bustling and somewhat dusty marketplace. On all sides, vendors shouted over each other in an unfamiliar language, selling everything from steaming cups of tea to wooden legs. Holly and Buck slipped, ghostlike, through the rushing crowds of people. No one seemed to notice them.

"Where are we now?" Buck complained. "Are we even close? Time's of the essence, remember?"

Holly shushed him impatiently. "Quiet. This is important."

"How do you know?" Buck mumbled resentfully, but didn't press any further. They watched as the marketplace blurred around the edges, and the light faded. It became evening, and only a few vendors were left to pack up their wares. Among them was a tired-looking young man, only a few years older than thirty, whom Holly thought she recognised. Her hands shook, and she felt as though she were about to cry again.

"Come on." she ordered, and began to drift after the young man, just as the marketplace blurred again.

When their surroundings came into focus again, the market was gone. In its stead was a windowless room with smooth metallic walls. The furnishings were very spartan: only an uncomfortable wooden chair and a simple wooden cradle. On the chair, sitting with her legs crossed, was a younger version of Alexandra. The djinn was unmistakable, even though her curly black hair was cut in a neat bob style, and her usual sari was replaced by a navy blue skirt suit. She was crying silently, and absently sewing the leg back on to a stuffed camel. Every so often, she'd glance at the baby sleeping peacefully in the cradle.

"I'm sorry." Alexandra whispered, in equal parts to the baby and the plush camel. "I'm sorry, Holly. But it's for the best."

She finished fixing the camel, put the sewing needle in a small box, and tied the thread off before placing the stuffed animal in the cradle next to the infant Holly. The baby sneezed, and opened her dewy brown eyes, still drowsy from her nap.

"Nimrod could never take care of you properly. I could never take care of you properly, either. Not in my current condition."

The baby Holly cooed happily, as if in response to Alexandra's tearful admissions.

Despite her tears, Alexandra smiled. "You'll be happy, my dear. I know you will. You'll be with family. You'll make friends and have a brother and parents who will take good and proper care of you. After all," Alexandra choked on her words now, "Adam Fletcher is your Uncle Magnus' grandson. He'll know what to do when the time comes."

The dreamscape blurred yet again, and the fifteen-year-old Holly could just barely see Alexandra pick up the infant, and turn into a cloud of swirling, sputtering, sparking white smoke.

A moment later, they were outside of the lamp, on a deserted street. Deserted, at least, except for the dark young man from the marketplace. He watched Alexandra's smoke billow out of the lamp, and fell to his knees, murmuring a fervent prayer.

When the white smoke solidified into Alexandra's normal form, the young man bowed his head respectfully.

"O great djinn," he addressed Alexandra in reverent Arabic. "What may I, a humble human, offer to you?"

"You are Adam Alexander Fletcher, correct?"

Adam nodded fervently. "I am."

"Dad," Holly whispered.


	13. Chapter 12: Midnight Visitor

**Chapter Twelve: Midnight Visitor**

Mark awoke in the dead of night to the sound of someone tapping a wooden stick loudly at his door and some unseasonal thunder from outside his window. Grouchily, he opened one eye halfway to look at his digital clock.

"Half past one," he muttered grumpily, "What does anyone need to be waking me up for at this hour?"

This show of irritation was due to nothing more than force of habit for Mark. He'd predicted, several hours before, that restful sleep was quite out of the question, at least while his little sister remained unconscious and feverish from the demon fire. So, with a bit more obligatory moaning and groaning, Mark got out of bed, pulled on a sweater that he'd conveniently left on the armchair next to the dying fire. Cautiously, Mark felt his way to the lightswitch by the door and flipped it. Nothing happened.

Annoyed with the faulty electricity, Mark swore under his breath and finally opened his door.

"What?!" he snapped at Dr. Godwin, even as the old djinn opened his mouth to speak.

Before Mark could process the motion, Dr. Godwin rapped him squarely on his head with the cane he'd been using to knock on Mark's door.

"Show some respect for your elders, boy." The djinn scolded. "I am 261 years old, you know."

Mark winced and gingerly felt the swelling lump that had formed on the top of his head, trying to formulate an appropriate response.

"If you hadn't already surmised, the electricity's gone out again. Take this. In any case, the electricity isn't what's important right now." Dr. Godwin shoved a bulky kerosene lantern tinto Mark's hand and leaned heavily on his cane.

"Then what is important?" Mark growled through gritted teeth, fumbling his grip on the lantern's handle a little.

Frowning, Dr. Godwin brandished his cane menacingly, and smirked in vague satisfaction when Mark flinched away. "Your ill humour can wait, boy. There's someone at the door. Go answer it."

Mark scowled some more. "And why exactly did you have to wake me? Can't you open the door yourself?" he asked, shutting his bedroom door behind him, in a very subtle sign of defeat.

Dr. Godwin sniffed disdainfully. "'Twould be improper. I myself am a guest in my son's house. It would be entirely disrespectful of Nimrod if I was to answer his door rather than one of the servants. As Mr. Groanin is accompanying Nimrod and Alexandra in transit to Braemar, the duty of answering the door falls to you, the cook." he explained tersely.

"You English and your manners," Mark muttered irritably as he led the way through the twists and turns of the hallways, having only the slightest notion of where in the huge house they were. This lack of navigational knowledge was only aided by the fact that everything looked very different illuminated by the yellowish light of the kerosene lantern.

After a few moments of tense silence, Mark spoke again, naturally to complain some more. "And why are you even here? It's as though Nimrod doesn't trust me and Cas to stay put for a night before we can get tickets up to Braemar, too. What does he think we'll do, throw a party in a city where we know nobody, and while Holly's in grave danger?"

"I wouldn't say that it's you and Castiel that Nimrod doesn't trust, so much as he doesn't trust me." Dr. Godwin replied regretfully. "In my old age, I've become rather... erm... what's the word?"

"Cantankerous?" Mark suggested. "Ornery? Crotchety?"

"Scatterbrained." Dr. Godwin snapped his fingers, ignoring Mark. "I suppose that I must be very difficult for Nimrod to accept that his old dad spends much of his time living in a daydream of the past." The old djinn sighed, looking very weary indeed. "God I hate being old. I can never remember anything these days. Er- what was your name, again?"

"It's Mark." Mark supplied dully as they reached the heavy stained oak front door.

"Mark Fletcher, isn't it?" asked Dr. Godwin. Mark paused before beginning to undo the locks on the door.

"No. It's Mark Coomes." Mark frowned, though it was quite a different frown from before. It was a frown caused by the vaguest of memories from Mark's all too distant childhood. Sighing, he pulled open the heavy front door and was immediately met with a gust of freezing air and blinding snow. His teeth chattered audibly, and at first, he didn't see anyone at the door, and was about to slam it irritatedly and glare at Dr. Godwin for making him get out of his bed, when Mark chanced to glance down at the snow-plastered doorstep, and saw the half-frozen snow-dusted girl about Holly's age collapsed and shivering on Nimrod's doorstep.

She was definitely alive, and still conscious, for when she noticed that the door had been opened, she stood on very wobbly legs, her knobbly knees shaking from the cold. "I-is th-th-this N-N-N-Nimr-r-r-rod's h-h-house?"

"Yeah, it is. Come in." The girl, who was darker and taller than Mark, stumbled across the threshold, and peeled her soaking wet and far too thin black jacket off, while Mark shut the door behind her.

"You need a towel or a blanket or something? Hypothermia is serious stuff, you know." Mark said worriedly, taking the girl's jacket and hanging it on the hatstand, where it slowly began to drip onto the marble floor of the foyer.

The girl shivered some more, and tried to form a coherent answer. "F-f-f-f-f-" she stammered, teeth still sounding, for all the world, just like a pair of castanets. "f-f-f-f-fire," she finally managed, the snow on her clothes and hair beginning to melt slowly.

Mark nodded. "Yeah, sure. Come to the kitchen and I'll get a fire going."

"I will go and fetch a blanket whilst you do that, then." Dr. Godwin shuffled off, picking up another lit kerosene lantern that he must have left in the foyer earlier.

The girl nodded gratefully and allowed herself to be ushered through the dim hallways and to the kitchen, where Mark was surprised to find Cas sitting sleepily in one of the uncomfortable wooden kitchen chairs, wrapped in a thick blanket and staring pensively into the fire in the grate. On the table next to him was a tall mug of hot chocolate, as well as a small oil lamp whose solitary wick was burning quietly.

He looked up when the doors swung open, and, seeing the girl's soaking wet and shivering state, gallantly gave up his blanket and silently stoked the fire up for her.

"Thanks, Cas." said Mark. He didn't have to ask why Cas had been up at such an ungodly hour: Mark knew that Cas was having as much trouble sleeping as Mark had had, due to the all-consuming worry.

"So... er... Who are you, exactly?" Cas asked after a somewhat awkward silence.

The girl sniffled loudly, and then sneezed. "S-Sorry, didn't I s-say? I'm Z-Zoe M-Moore" Zoe shivered, inching closer to the fire and wrapping Cas's blanket tightly around her shoulders. "I m-m-met Holly th-this m-morning."

Mark nodded. "Alexandra mentioned you, yeah. So why are you here? And why now? Obviously you know that Holly's been having issues today- er, yesterday, I guess."

Zoe sneezed again, a thick, sticky glob of phlegm landing in the fire and causing a small explosion.

"I need someone to help m-me. Say, d-d'you have any h-hot cocoa? Or m-maybe even a l-levitator?"

"I'll make you some hot chocolate," Mark said kindly, and found the kettle that Cas had used but neglected to put away after making his own hot chocolate. He went to the sink, filled it with some more water, and then placed the kettle on the stove to boil. "I'm Mark Coomes, by the way, and this is Cas Malone."

Zoe nodded politely, edging even closer to the crackling fire in the grate, "I know. Y-you're both s-sort of famous."

"Really?" Cas asked, somewhat distracted and flattered by this news. "Cool. Er- anyway, what do you need help with?"

"Is N-Nimrod here?" Zoe asked, now so near to the fire that some of the melted snow on her hair and clothes turned to steam, enveloping her in a white, semi-transparent cloud.

Mark shook his head. "Sorry. Nimrod, Alexandra, and Mr. Groanin went with Holly on the train to Glasgow. But anyway, what's so urgent that it couldn't wait until morning, or at least be said in a phone call?"

Zoe hesitated. "I know that it's th-the middle of the n-night, but I wouldn't have c-come if I d-didn't have to. This place was hard as h-heck to find, and in th-this effing bad weather, t-too!" She sniffed again, and moved nearer to the fire, so that the tips of her water-saturated shoes were touching the edge of the kitchen fire, not that Zoe, being a djinn, paid that any mind. "My dad's missing."

"What?!" Cas and Mark exclaimed in unison, but Zoe did not respond, merely huddled by the fire in silence. Cas stood up and walked over to the hearth in order to discover the cause of Zoe's sudden silence.

"She's asleep." He finally pronounced, adding a couple of fresh logs to the fire before going back to his chair.

Mark shrugged. "It's a wonder anyone can sleep under such circumstances as hers. At least, that is, if I heard her right. Her dad's missing?"

Cas nodded. "That's what I heard."

Mark sighed sympathetically. "Yeah. I didn't sleep properly for weeks after... after the fires." He didn't have to elaborate for Cas to know that Mark was referring to the string of arsons in New York City the past summer, caused by Dimme Teer, that had killed Mark's parents, stepmother, and uncle, along with Cas's adoptive parents.

"Yeah." Cas agreed. "But at least you knew what had happened to your dad." he frowned. "At least you weren't living a lie for your entire life."

"What's all this talk about living lies?" Dr. Godwin swooped into the kitchen, smoking his pipe, holding an extinguished lantern in one hand, and carrying a thick blanket in the other. "If anyone has been living a lie, it is you, Magnus. But not just you, everyone involved with the Phoenix Acolytes!"

Mark and Cas looked around, confused, wondering where Magnus was hiding, before Cas finally spoke up. "Um, Dr. Godwin, sir, Magnus went with the others to Braemar. On the train to Glasgow?"

Zoe sneezed explosively just then, and fell over, thankfully away from the fireplace, with a confused shout.

"Who? What? Phoenix Acolytes? Where am I?" Her eyes darted around the kitchen from person to person until she remembered where she was, and why she had come there. "Oh, gosh, did I fall asleep?" she asked, sitting up again and gingerly feeling the brand-new lump on the back of her head.

"Yeah," Mark supplied dully, now searching the cupboards for the cocoa mix.

"India, what a pleasant surprise! I thought that you were still in Argentina!" Dr. Godwin smiled absently, offering Zoe the blanket.

Zoe stared at him for a moment. "My name's Zoe Moore, Dr. Godwin, sir. Remember? India was my mother, but she died a long time ago."

"That's impossible!" Dr. Godwin waved Zoe away. "India's daughter is only a few months old, not your age! And besides, she's all the way in Red Gully. Although, I must admit, you do look very similar to India. So is she still in France, then?"

"My mother never went to France. Or Argentina. And she's long dead, besides."

Cas was observing Dr. Godwin's behaviour with distinct interest. He had, since Dr. Godwin had addressed the conspicuously absent Magnus, figured out a few things. Zoe was being called by her dead mother's name, which surely Dr. Godwin ought to have known of her death. Cas was also shrewd enough to realize that Mark looked similar enough to Magnus that Dr. Godwin could mistake him for the ghost.

"Dr. Godwin," Cas began, choosing his words carefully, "What year is it?"

Dr. Godwin turned his attention to Cas, went pale at the sight of him, and then red. Throwing down the lantern, Dr. Godwin reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a rectangular scrap of paper with strange, calligraphic writing emblazoned in red on both sides.

"Begone, demon!" Dr. Godwin roared, and threw the paper charm (for that was what it was,) directly at Cas's face.

Time seemed to slow as the charm flew through the air, before it made contact withits target, settling longways on Cas's forehead. A second of tense silence seemed to echo through the kitchen, before red lightning crackled through the air, and Cas began to scream in pain.


	14. Chapter 13: Awakening and Expulsion

**Chapter 13: Awakening and Expulsion**

"What in the heck was that all about?" Buck asked, nonplussed.

Holly smiled sadly and shook her head, fighting back bittersweet tears. "Nothing, nothing. Come on, we should find my Neshamah before I die."

"Whatever," shrugged the boy, and followed Holly down a shadowy passageway that had spontaneously appeared before them.

"This ought to be the right way. According to my theory, which I thought of just now, we kept being diverted from the goal because one or both of us had some baggage that distracted us."

"Hm." Buck raised his eyebrows disbelievingly, but didn't comment any further, beyond saying "I hope you're right."

"Of course I am." The dim light that had lit their way before faded, until it changed into an oddly impenetrable darkness, so that Holly had to stretch her arms out in front of her in order to avoid bumping into the walls of the passage.

After what seemed like hours of walking in relative silence, they came to a relatively open area, with the faintly glowing shape of a tree lighting the otherwise featureless round room.

"That'd be it." Holly announced, smirking with smug self-satisfaction that she'd been the one to find her Neshamah.

"How do you know?" Buck demanded. "It's a tree, not a fire. Plus it's not glowing very brightly."

"Are you asking me how I know that that's my Neshamah, the very source of my power and keeper of my innermost wishes? Think before you speak next time, Buck." Holly took a step towards the dimly glowing tree, and, as though in accordance with her proximity, it glowed a brighter red than before. "And who says it's not a fire?"

Right on cue, the tree burst into a quiet, reddish flame, and Holly smirked. "Anyway, now what? We got to my Neshamah, what do we do now?"

Buck became very quiet. "Um... that's the hard part. You have to wake up and make your spirit leave your body."

Holly raised an eyebrow. "And how exactly am I supposed to do that?"

"Er... I actually have absolutely no idea. Um... how do you try to wake up when you're having a particularly bad nightmare?" Buck was suitably sheepish. Holly thought carefully.

"Well, lately I've had this recurring nightmare, I suppose. I've always woken at the same point in it, though." Holly confessed.

"Okay. So what made you wake up?" Buck asked, pretending that he knew even the vaguest details of dream psychology.

"I'd... er... rather not say." Holly really did not wish to share the distressing events of her nightmares.

"Then how do you expect me to help you?" Buck rolled his eyes.

Holly huffed. "Fine. It was a huge shock that woke me up, okay? I'm not telling you any more than that!" She folded her arms and tried not to blush, which was a lot harder to do as an embodiment of her own consciousness than as a living, breathing person. Buck saw and raised both of his eyebrows as high as they would go.

"Hm." He said, extremely suspiciously, but let it slide. "A shock, you say?" He seemed to be deep in thought for a moment or two, and Holly was quiet, thinking as hard and fast as she could.

She looked to the quietly burning tree for help, any sort of hint or prophesy. None was forthcoming, however, she did notice something that she hadn't noticed before. Near the place where the tree's burning trunk merged into what could only be a sort of floor or ground, there was quite a lot of ominous swirling black mist. Holly turned to Buck.

"What do you think that-?" She began, but was interrupted by Buck punching her in the stomach.

"Sorry," he winced sympathetically as Holly vanished.

Holly's eyes snapped open. All of a sudden, her senses were overloaded. After the relative silence of her head, the sounds of Nimrod talking, the clatter of the train, and the telltale click-click-click of someone walking down the corridor overwhelmed Holly's ears, the sweet, thick, heavy scent of cigar smoke dominated her senses of taste and smell, bleak sunlight filtering through the grey smoke attacked her eyes, practically blinding her, and her whole body ached to the bone. Remembering how Buck had punched her in the stomach, and she winced and began to cough wetly, turning over onto her side, not without great difficulty, only to cough up more than a little blood onto the white pillowcase, staining it scarlet.

"She's awake! Looks like Jonathan actually knew what he was doing... sort of." Said an unfamiliar male voice, filled with both wonder and disappointment. Purely on instinct, (which had been carefully instilled by Mark over the course of several months,) Holly reached for the sheets and pulled them up, waiting for her hazy vision to refocus as it normally would.

She tried to speak, but only coughed up more blood, and her eyes darted to the blurry red blob that could only be Nimrod, pleading for help. She watched as Nimrod hurried to her side.

"Holly are you all right? Can you hear me?" he asked, sounding breathless with worry.

Summoning what felt like a great deal of her remaining strength, Holly nodded. Laboriously, she managed to stop coughing long enough to realize that not only did her entire body ache to the bones, but she also felt uncomfortably hot, and not because of the smoke from Nimrod's cigar.

For the first time in months, Holly truly feared for her life, and it was due to the fact that it was the first time in her life that she'd ever felt uncomfortably hot. Gasping for breath, she tried to form words, tried to beg Nimrod for help, when the unfamiliar male voice spoke up again, still seemingly awed.

"I don't believe it, Nimrod, I mean, I really thought that it was impossible for her to awaken. I wonder how Jonathan managed it."

"Yes, yes, Magnus. We're all aware that you doubted the ghost boy's ability to rescue Holly. However, the question remains, what are we to do now?"

"Can't... stay..." Holly finally managed to rasp, coughing up even more blood onto her pillowcase.

"Where can't you stay, Holly?" Nimrod asked, quickly turning back to his daughter.

"Too... hot..." Holly coughed some more, inwardly screaming for any sort of aid from Buck.

It seemed to work. For a moment, the oddest sensation overtook the overheated djinn girl, almost as though she was being controlled by someone or something else. She panicked for a second, but quickly realized that it was only Buck. Relieved, she surrendered her control, and allowed Buck to speak.

"ZYGO-" he began, in Holly's voice, but as he was using Holly's throat and mouth, he had to cough up more of Holly's blood, too. Soon, he managed to stop coughing long enough to rasp "ZYGOBRANCHIATE!"

"Holly," Nimrod said nervously, "Where did you hear that word?" But it was too late: Buck's utterance of his focus word, albeit with a voice that was not his own, had sent his spirit as well as Holly's astral body flying out of Holly's overheated body and across the compartment, and straight into the unfamiliar man who had been so surprised that Buck had been successful in his mission.

"Hello there," he said, helping Holly and Buck up off of the floor. Buck accepted the help silently, and dusted his blue tinted ghostly Metallica t-shirt and artfully torn blue jeans off, as though that would help anything, but Holly was too distracted by examining the man's appearance.

He was blue and semi-transparent, just like Buck was now, but Holly had the strangest feeling that she had met him somewhere before, she just couldn't place where. Either that, or he bore a strong resemblance to someone whom she couldn't quite name.

"You're Holly, right?" he asked, his dark eyes twinkling kindly.

Silently, Holly nodded.

"I've heard quite a bit about you. Oh, but where are my manners? I'm your Uncle Magnus. Your mother's (unfortunately,) dead brother."

"Oh," Holly finally managed. Really, she ought to have realised this sooner, and found herself mentally berating herself for her slowness.

"Magnus?" Nimrod asked, his voice half a pitch higher than normal, a sure sign that he was acutely worried. "What is happening? What has happened to Holly?"

"Her spirit is fine, Nimrod. She's right here. Holly? Can you speak up?" Magnus assured his friend.

"Dad?" Holly squeaked, suddenly realising that this whole episode was rather more unnerving than the time when Azazel had tried kill her outright. "What's going on?"

"I'm not sure, my child. For whatever reasons, you've been infected with Demon's Fire." Nimrod seemed a little calmer to hear Holly's voice, albeit from out of thin air.

"Which was how I died," Magnus added helpfully.

"Very reassuring." Holly shot her uncle a very disparaging look, before remembering that she was nothing more than an astral body. However, Uncle Magnus had seemed to be able to see her well enough before, to help her up. Whatever the case, Uncle Magnus ignored Holly's look, and continued.

"Now the only question that remains is: What are we to do now?"


End file.
